Simplifying IT Support (01) - Why IT Support is Important

With more and more connected consumers, agile business models, data analytics, and product development,doing business today is increasingly about managing data. To adapt, organizations are pushing Digital Transformation (DX) agendas that run the gamut from simple software updates to full-blown restructuring of the company to support the changing digital agenda.

This increases demand for IT from business units who need help with their growing software needs as they modernize. At the same time, managing data-related functions like cybersecurity and privacy regulation places even more of a demand on IT. Consequently, it’s overwhelmingly likely that your IT department feels swamped.

Thinking about IT support in a new way can free up valuable IT time and will allow your team to focus on business priorities and become more strategic. Let’s dive into why IT support is important and how you can build out a strategy that lasts.

With cloud adoption, new technology, and faster networks, employees have easy access to a world of new digital tools and services they never had before. The result is vendor sprawl. In fact, the number of software applications being deployed in large firms increased 68% in just four years.

When you combine the growing problem of vendor sprawl with IT’s loss of centralized control, you can see why complexity is an issue. Basic IT functions such as securing the organization’s network, keeping track of expired contracts, and maintaining a Service Desk for vendor tickets are difficult to handle because IT simply does not have the visibility they need.

Complexity introduces risk – in this case, there is risk of business downtime and risk of expired contracts that result in lapses in coverage. Both can disrupt processes, slowing productivity and bringing work to a grinding halt. With companies’ increased reliance upon innovation and the software platforms that support collaboration – such as Microsoft 365 – imagine how this could cause a domino effect that damages productivity across an entire organization.

Regardless of whether a company is taking baby steps toward digital maturity or pursuing aggressive change, a common thread runs through the IT conversation at most organizations these days: the growing number of vendor support contracts that need to be maintained. From sales and marketing to accounting and customer service, there is potential in every business unit to adopt new tools and services – each with a contract that needs to be maintained, a new contact person (or persons) for support, and new channels to communicate through. In other words - more complexity!

Since employees have free reign to adopt and abandon SaaS subscriptions at will, things can get chaotic. Most organizations have unused or duplicate subscriptions and a lot of app turnover. Most have ‘orphaned’ apps, which are applications nobody oversees because the original billing owner has left the company.

Consider that, according to one survey, the average company turns over more than 40% of its apps in just two years. Additionally, companies with 1,000 or more employees use an average of more than 200 SaaS applications. That figure will only grow, as SaaS software use is still growing in businesses across all industries. Compared to six years ago, the worldwide SaaS market has more than doubled, from about $63 million to roughly $157 billion U.S. dollars. That is a lot of vendor contracts and contacts!

With too many vendor support contracts to maintain and too many vendor support contract channels to communicate through, IT departments quickly lose visibility. Service Level Agreement (SLA) performance becomes impossible to keep track of and service contracts are anything but transparent. There is no single view of performance across multiple vendors, and no easy way to keep track of incidents raised. Expired contracts slip by in the fray, or an update is missed, which increases the likelihood of business downtime and compliance issues. You spend a fortune on software licenses – failing to manage them properly could mean you will be spending even more on fines.

To confront this problem, have your team or external experts conduct structured business reviews so you gain insight into SLA performance. Additionally, you should pull reports on incident trends, helping you learn about your business and the software vendors you have contracts with.

Nobody wants to lose the gains they have made in the digital era. Thanks to SaaS and other cloud-enabled improvements, plus a host of enterprise-level applications that make work easier, small and medium-sized businesses now have access to digital tools and services that were once only accessible to enterprise clients. This helps level the playing field in the marketplace, allowing organizations of all sizes compete on a global scale.

But having to manage a growing body of software licenses and contracts – not to mention filing support tickets and managing responses for each of the vendors your organization has partnered with – is becoming too large a task to handle. If you are a global company that needs 24/7 access to support, it is even more challenging to navigate the multi-vendor landscape.

The luxury of dealing with just one single vendor is not something that is out of reach. With SoftwareONE’s Unified Support for MultiVendor, it is possible to simplify your support contracts across different vendors. Plus, we’ll be there to combine resources and technologies to solve a wide range of your greatest issues. And now that you know the difference strong IT support makes, all your organization has to do is take the next step.