IT disruption costs 44.1 billion - yet we don't call support

According to the Union's 2017 survey on the daily lives of civil servants, 133.5 million working hours in the private sector were lost due to IT disruptions in the previous year. The cost of working hours amounts to SEK 44.1 billion. The reason is often that staff shy away from hiring competent IT support and instead rely on the company's internal IT department to take care of everything. So why are we so afraid to contact our external support providers and why don't we work more preventively on IT problems?

Cost concerns discourage contact with IT support

The answer to why so few choose to pick up the phone to contact external IT support is the same as for so many other business-related issues - money. Many continue to work in poorly performing solutions, or opt for some form of shadow IT, because they fear that support will be too expensive as costs are often ongoing.

Or you always want to try to solve the problem internally first - even though in the end the IT support will have to step in anyway. The problem with dealing with issues internally is that you need to have the staff and skills to do so. In addition, you need to build a working methodology around case management.

The time and costs involved are avoided by choosing support from an external provider instead, so less time is wasted. Plus, you get the breadth of your supplier's collective expertise - something very few can manage in-house. It's also a more flexible way of dealing with temporary peaks; illness or holidays. You're simply not as dependent on a single individual. Support costs can also be adjusted to suit current conditions and the number of users - which can grow and shrink.

Working proactively with your IT support to avoid recurring problems

A lot of it is about proactivity - working to ensure that problems never arise in the first place. A fixed-price model creates incentives for the supplier to ensure that as few errors as possible occur. If costs are ongoing, it's easy to just fix problems provisionally - and so they tend to recur. For your IT support provider, this is not a problem as they can charge by the hour. Getting to the bottom of the problem, with ongoing costs, can mean spending a lot of time solving a problem that you, the customer, have not accounted for in terms of cost. If you have a fixed-price contract, it is in both your interests that as few errors as possible occur.

At Wesafe, we think you should get good IT support, at a fixed price. When you work with us, we do a lot of groundwork to ensure the environment and minimise risks. We create customisations, assist with management and make appropriate adjustments to your environment to ensure that as little technology disruption as possible occurs.

We also offer reports that map case management. You can see where problems often occur and we can suggest improvements to the environment based on this information. We compare the reports with the typical Wesafe customer to see which problem areas are different. In the event of an intervention, we can also take out follow-up reports to ensure that it has really paid off.

Change your inefficient ways of working with the right IT support

In many ways, good support is about communicating how to avoid inefficiencies by changing ways of working that still deliver the same functionality. For us at Wesafe, it's very much about keeping our customers constantly informed about new services that are being developed and the opportunities they offer.

Our fixed-price model includes all IT support for Microsoft services. We can also provide an on-site resource at your business for set times, depending on your needs. Want to know more about what's included in our fixed-price support? Follow the link here or contact us!