3 Case Studies That Show ROI On Outsourcing IT Help Desks
The IT help desk is an essential part of a business that helps it connect with its clients. You can consider your own IT help desk as the face of your company since it’s often the first point of contact existing and new customers will encounter with your business. But not all businesses can afford to have their own dedicated IT help desks, which is why more and more companies are looking to outsource this particular service.
So what are the examples of businesses that outsourced their IT help desks in return for significant ROI? Generally, businesses that require plenty of points of contact between a business and their customers can benefit the most from outsourcing their IT help desk services. These are typically companies that handle an enormous amount of customer traffic, whose services may require additional support and/or troubleshooting.
Companies That Have Outsourced IT Help Desks
Support services are a considerable demand for businesses in almost every niche, but there are three examples where outsourcing IT crosses over from an option to a necessity. These companies have moved a significant amount of their IT support team offshore, and have shown strong growth and results while doing so.
CitiGroup
In 2012, CitiGroup moved more than 11,000 of its jobs from their HQ to offshore, with the intent to cut down on costs and reorganize their resources towards initiatives that can give them more ROI. By developing long-term partnerships with companies like Wipro, CitiGroup intended to develop their offshore team with the expertise required from their counterparts back at the HQ, while potentially cutting administrative costs in the process. Overall, the move saved the company more than $1 billion dollars a year.
Years later, CitiGroup’s “centers of excellence” are composed of highly-trained staff and personnel, which can reliably provide IT support to CitiGroup’s operations. Of particular note are the EMEA’s Business Testing and Parameter Center located in Poland, which tests and supports banking applications in the UAE, Egypt, Russia, and the Czech Republic. Many financial institutions like J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs have followed suit with outsourcing their IT help desks offshore.
Wise (formerly known as TransferWise)
On the technical side of operations, the global money transfer service Wise has extensively relied on contractors from Estonia and Ukraine to support their developers, which was crucial to getting the company running in its early days. Wise only raised around $250,000 dollars in capital, so the company needed an IT support team that combined the quality they needed to keep the platform running while also keeping costs low.
This is where offshoring teams in East Europe were able to help. Technicians from Ukraine and Estonia have consistently been at the forefront of Wise’s IT developments. In recent years, Wise has even relocated Ukrainian developers to the core offshore team in Estonia, which may significantly cut down on operational costs and improve the performance of their IT team. By outsourcing their IT services, Wise was able to keep their initial expenses when launching their company to a minimum, as well as secure talent with the skills that their core team lacked.
Google is perhaps the biggest company that outsources its IT help desk: with a suite of services attached to the brand, customer support is a crucial component of its business. Given the high amount of customer interactions that Google needs to address, there’s a distinct need for a robust IT help desk team to resolve any customer issues quickly and efficiently.
Overall, Google maintains an extensive network of offshore IT support teams, handling a hundred thousand calls in an average week. With a mixture of on-site and offshore staff, Google is able to process a large number of calls and support tickets without reducing support for its core services. Many companies have followed Google’s example, blending in-house and outsourced customer service. This move significantly cuts costs in labor, with Google’s contractors surpassing their direct employees from 2018.
By outsourcing their IT help desks and other IT services, these companies significantly reduced costs while making sure that the level of quality stays consistent across job sites. This allowed them more flexibility when assigning resources to a project, and the capability to pull manpower to more urgent matters when it was needed.
What To Learn From These Examples
Admittedly, the full ROI – or the extent of offshore operations – will most likely never be divulged by companies that outsource their IT help desks and operations. However, there are a few key insights you can gain by observing how the companies went about their outsourcing:
IT Outsourcing As A Way To Free Up Your Own Resources
The most obvious benefit to outsourcing your IT help desk is that you free your own in-house IT support team to take care of escalated concerns that may require more technical expertise than your usual call. Not all IT support requests demand the same amount of time and attention, and it’s important that your customers who need to be addressed immediately get their support at the earliest time possible.
By allowing less urgent tickets to be handled by your outsourced IT team, you’re able to filter urgent concerns more efficiently. Not only will this lower your overall handling time for tickets, but your business can also establish itself as a company that takes its customer’s concerns quickly and efficiently.
IT Outsourcing As A Way To Get Better Talent
Quickly-developing countries often encourage an interest in IT-related jobs, which means that if you choose the right country to outsource to, you can easily hire talented workers that work efficiently and reliably for you from the start. Some countries like Poland have quickly risen as a hotspot for tech-savvy workers, with towns like Warsaw and Krakow hosting outsourced IT teams of some of the world’s biggest tech companies.
The advantage of hiring an employee that already has familiarity with their incoming work can be extremely beneficial for your operations and finances. You spend less time training them and they start earlier than your regular employees, which can allow you to quickly fill in positions if you’re scaling your business. Outsourced IT help desks can also be trained quickly, which can ensure that quality stays consistent between your help desk teams.
IT Outsourcing As A Way To Cut Costs
While IT help desks are an essential part of most businesses, not all of these businesses have the resources necessary to support a full – or growing – IT support team. Taking into account expenses like hardware, maintenance costs, regular training, and licenses, in-house IT help desks can quickly accrue costs over time. This can be an issue for startups or small-to-medium businesses, which need to get off the ground quickly with limited resources.
An outsourced IT help desk team doesn’t demand the same investment as an in-house team. The exact amount will differ depending on the size of the outsourced team and the exact agreement you may have with your outsourcing company, but companies can expect to cut significant costs when outsourcing their IT help desks. This gives you the freedom to scale your IT help desk teams as needed without having to pay expensive upfront costs.
IT Outsourcing As A Way To Increase Security
While it may seem counterintuitive for outsourcing to be more secure than in-house operations, there are some definite advantages that outsourcing has for IT security. Companies that offer IT outsourcing are also trained in IT management and security solutions, ensuring that your company’s data is protected even if it’s not within your direct oversight. Many managed IT services offer insurance options and other plans that you can pursue to improve your overall IT security, both for your in-house and outsourced team.
It’s also likely that your outsourcing provider will have better infrastructure than your in-house IT team with data security. This gives you the option to use their own security infrastructure for your own business, or have them set up or improve your own IT security.
Overall, outsourcing can be a great asset if you’re looking to use the resources and manpower that you have in an effective and cost-efficient capacity. By finding the right partner, you’re able to grow your business at the pace that you want, without sacrificing quality on the way.
Support Your IT Systems With Abacus Managed IT Services
While there can be some initial hesitation with the outsourcing of your IT services to a third party, there are plenty of real examples of companies that have managed to leverage them for a successful ROI. The key thing to remember is to make sure that you’ve partnered with a provider that can provide you the services that you need long-term, as becoming a partner with a company that looks out for your growth can be extremely beneficial. By outsourcing your IT help desk, you can free up your own in-house resources on your own operations.
Abacus can help you get your IT systems up and running with extensive data protection and security strategies. We have extensive experience with helping our clients run their IT departments more efficiently, combining the latest tools and strategies for IT management. Our solutions are easy to integrate with your existing IT systems, and we can help make any transition from your old systems to a new one occur without issue. Contact us today to learn more about our services.
