Hiring services to support businesses is a smart move
Excerpt from the Sunday Business Post 22/3/20. John Bergin interviewed by Jason Walsh.
As managed services grow one of the key issues that arises is ensuring that a service provider can meet your needs.
John Bergin, managing director of IT Force, said that while there is no magic answer, there is a simple one: they should consult with you.
The first step is knowing what those needs are, and a good managed service provider should be able to sit down, look at your organisation and figure that out.
One problem is that not all service providers can do this.
“‘Managed service’ is bandied around a lot. There used to be a lot of ‘IT maintenance’ companies and they’ve all changed their names, but they’re still doing the same thing.”
In short, companies must take a strategic view of IT. “It’s a case of thinking about what you’ve got and about where you want to go,” said Bergin.
Supporting the business with services
One area that has received a lot of attention in recent weeks, and for good reason, is remote working.
With the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronoavirus, there has been a lot of talk about continuing work without gathering in the office.
“What a lot of companies will do is have a mobile strategy and [have] people access from remote locations, a lot of the time that would be from home," Bergin said.
However, according to Bergin, this can also be considered part of a wider business continuity plan that might include cloud service, disaster recovery and backup.
The problem with these kinds of services is that businesses frequently fail to see the value in them. Until they need them, that is.
“An awful lot of people still think, ‘It’ll be all right’. They don’t want to pay money for things that might happen,” said Bergin.
Some sectors tend to deal with things better than others, whether it is in security, back-up, disaster recovery or other areas—and usually because they are regulated.
“If you take the financial sector, they’ve got the Central Bank to deal with and they’re all very conscious of auditing and people coming in and asking difficult questions,” said Bergin. “Take your average distribution company and that’s probably not true.”
Internal buy-in
Getting IT right means getting the board on board, so to speak. It also means that if there is an internal IT team, they should not be left feeling they are being gradually shown the door.
Here, again, consultancy helps, this time with communication.
“How do you get that message across? With great difficulty. A lot of them don’t understand it, don’t appreciate and don’t want to pay. As the company grows, they tend to have an IT manager, maybe even an IT director, and the awareness is there,” said Bergin.
IT Force’s clients range from organisations of 10 users to those of 250 users, and it provides a wide array of services in key areas including a full-service outsourced IT department and specialist security services.
Bergin said that most of IT Force’s clients tend to take the whole IT package rather than mixing and matching specific services. The reason for this is that it keeps things running smoothly.
“You have to get someone you can trust. You can’t just do it piecemeal,” he said.
This is particularly true for small and medium businesses, who already deal with enough complexity: “If you’re [a massive organisation like] Bank of Ireland you can break it all out, but the smaller guy can’t.”
With managed services, you really get a breadth of knowledge, said Bergin.
“You need the grey-haired guys who can help you plan and understand how your business relates to the IT you’ve got—or how, maybe, it doesn’t. You also need the young, energetic guys. Basically, you need the things to be fixed when they’re broken, but also to think more long-term,” he said.