IT Support Trends Driven by Pandemic

Male employee unhappy with excessive work

Overworked Performing “Other (Pandemic) Duties as Assigned”? — Help Has Arrived

From librarians taking nonemergency calls for their cities to software engineers creating crowd-sourced, interactive maps of free meal sites in the U.S., it seems like everyone has taken on additional responsibilities during the pandemic and its aftermath. While some see these “side-gigs” as opportunities, others feel overwhelmed as their firms ask them to handle unfamiliar duties.
One area where we have seen this be an issue is with technology services. With firms large and small switching to remote operating models in 2020 (and many planning to keep them that way or move to a hybrid model), personnel such as Operations Managers are expected to pitch in and help with IT service and support.
This is causing significant stress for workers at the management level, per the Economist. Between the combination of shifting responsibilities and the need to oversee a remote or hybrid workforce, their article notes, managers have a lot more work to do in responding to the pandemic. If this sounds like a problem for you or your staff, we have good news.

Third-Party Services Set to Skyrocket

Experts are predicting that 2021 will be a “banner year” for the third-party IT services market. While this trend is driven in part by digital transformation initiatives such as cloud adoption, it’s also being propelled by a practical reality: Operations Managers and other non-technical staff cannot pitch in forever without experiencing extreme burnout.
Furthermore, the impending IT talent crisis is going to make the situation even worse. In cybersecurity alone, experts predict there will be 3.5 million unfilled jobs in 2021 — a 350% increase from 2013. (To put this in perspective, that’s enough people to fill 50 NFL stadiums.) Exacerbating the problem, nothing can be done to stop this impending “tech crunch.” Employment needs in computer and information technology occupations are projected to grow 11 percent from 2019 to 2029, much faster than the average for all occupations.
A report from research firm McKinsey concurs, yet notes the imperative for business leaders to “reinvent their organizations for speed” in the post-COVID-19 era. One way they can do this, even with a talent crunch, is to cultivate extraordinary partnerships. “The rate of technological and business-model innovation alone makes it nearly impossible for any single organization to do everything itself,” note the authors.

Drive Value and ROI with IT Outsourcing

Even if a severe tech crunch wasn’t looming, and business leaders were not already challenged to find IT expertise for innovation projects, outsourcing IT services would be the most efficient bet. Nearly a decade ago, one survey benchmarked the savings from outsourced IT to be around $4,000 per user, yearly. That number has certainly risen, since.
At Carmichael Consulting, we have clients who routinely tell us how much stress, time and expense our IT assistance takes off their plates. Specifically, management-level personnel, from Operations Managers and Office Managers to Finance Managers, are grateful to hand off responsibility for IT continuity and service to a partner they really trust. (We work hard to earn that trust, too. We’ve been named a Best Business IT Service Provider for seven years in a row.)
We have developed an approach that enables us to tailor our IT service and support to the needs and budget of each client. We also offer add-on solutions, from mobile device management to cybersecurity. If you haven’t spoken with us in a while — or ever before — we invite you to give us a call at 678-719-9671. Our no-obligation assessment will help you determine where our services will provide your firm with the robust workplace (and workforce) support and ROI that our other clients already enjoy.

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