If your company is growing, it is a safe bet that your IT needs are growing too. What to do? The question always comes down to picking a path to meet those needs. Should you begin the hiring process or outsource all the work to a managed service provider and eliminate the internal team altogether? Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be an either-or situation. Co-managed IT services can give you the best of both worlds.
Co-managed IT services is best defined as a service model that allows your business to blend your internal IT team with the expertise and support of an IT managed service provider. It allows your team to customize which IT services to keep in-house and which to outsource.
How Does Co-Managed IT Work?
Co-management can be an ideal IT solution for both small and large organizations. It looks different for every business which is why we like to first analyze your existing IT department’s skills, tools and abilities before establishing your unique co-managed IT approach. What needs are being met and which are not? How does this affect your IT department and organization as a whole? From there, we can determine how to leverage your existing IT team and where we can introduce specific skillsets and competencies to complement your department make up.
Whether your business is in need of high-skill capabilities like advanced network engineering, application security or cybersecurity management or needs to delegate essential support activities like the help desk function, a co-managed IT agreement allows you the flexibility to give your internal team more capacity in their role and allows your department to scale to the needs of the organization seamlessly.
When Should You Consider Co-Managed IT Services?
Co-managed IT is ideal for any of the following:
Knowledge Gap
The IT field changes quickly, and it can be challenging to keep up. Even the most experienced IT staff may find a task or project that is beyond their current skill set or training. This is a good reason to supplement that knowledge gap with specialty experience.
New Projects
With growth comes new (and often emergent) IT projects that can stress the resources of your existing team. Co-managed IT can work alongside your team to maintain routine operations while your staff is tackling business-critical projects.
A Small IT Team
A spike in demand for IT services, changes in staffing, new projects or new users can cause a dramatic disruption to a small IT department. It can negatively impact your team and leave them feeling overworked. Rather than hiring additional, and sometimes temporary, staff, a co-managed IT service can assist your team when your organization has growth that requires immediate support to meet demand but scale down when your demand levels out.
Co-managed IT services is not industry-specific. Whether your organization is focused in banking and finance, healthcare, education, government services or something different, your IT team might benefit from a co-managed IT service model. Contact us today to learn more about our NetWatch™ Managed Service options and see how we can start helping right away.
