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Corporate IT Department Options In Post COVID Economy

Politicians sometimes say, “never let a good crisis go to waste.” CFOs tasked with making difficult post-pandemic choices would be wise to adopt a slightly different mantra: “Turn crisis into opportunity.”

Industry decision-makers will need to make seemingly difficult choices to turn organizations around as disruption subsides. Companies that shuttered or suffered economic downturns during the peak of the COVID-19 health crisis must find creative solutions to offset losses. Outsourcing IT may be just the vaccine CFOs need to cure unhealthy bottom lines. Thoughtful answers and reasoning to the following questions point to reducing or eliminating a corporate IT department.

Is Your Organization Positioned to Outsource?

Stay at Home orders and social distancing protocols forced many outfits to shift to remote workforces. The maneuver helped operations avoid closing, and the business community accepted this new way of interacting.

Now that organizations have invested in work-from-home infrastructure, many are planning to continue the policy. A recent Gartner survey of more than 300 CFOs indicates that 74 percent plan to maintain remote workforces.

“CFOs, already under pressure to tightly manage costs, clearly sense an opportunity to realize the cost benefits of a remote workforce. In fact, nearly a quarter of respondents said they would move at least 20 percent of their on-site employees to permanent remote positions,” Gartner Finance Practice vice president Alexander Bant reportedly said.

Remote workforces do not necessarily require oversight and support from in-house IT departments. Why go back to staffing a corporate IT department when outsourcing could just as easily handle for off-site employees?

Would Outsourcing IT Reduce Business Overhead?

Cost-cutting ranks among chief CFO concerns as operations trend toward a post-coronavirus new normal. According to a recent Forbes analysis of the post-pandemic business landscape, technology and security are among the few areas that could see investment increase.

“Some of the stop-gap cost-cutting measures include hiring freezes, ending travel, tighter management of discretionary costs, and reducing contractors. Areas critical to growth are less likely to be hit, such as digital transformation, customer experience, and cybersecurity,” according to Forbes CFO Network contributor Neil Edwards.

Having already increased Cloud footprints and remote workforces, industry leaders are scratching their heads about real estate expenses. The door appears wide open for CFOs to purge expensive office leases and capital expenditures.

It’s also an open secret that purchasing expensive computers and other hardware have been a drag on budgets. Technology advancements continue to render even recently purchased outdated. If shifting to a Cloud-based system is fiscally responsible, why pay for brick-and-mortar facilities? And, why pay a corporate IT department to maintain them?

Would Outsourcing Improve Telecom Systems & Reduce Costs?

A smartly designed enterprise phone system allows company leaders to communicate and collaborate with team members across a wide range of devices. These may include traditional phones, as well as devices being leveraged to create a remote network of talented people. To maximize the cost-savings of work-from-anywhere connectivity, outsourcing telecom delivers additional benefits such as the following.

  • Cost Scalability
  • Improved Remove Workforce Management
  • Advanced Call Routing
  • Improved Customer Relationship Management
  • Conference Call Simplicity
  • Reliable Connectivity
  • Reduced IT Oversight Costs

Along with these value-added benefits, managed IT telecom brings everything together into a singular network of robust connectivity. Decision-makers may be wondering why they paid for in-house telecom infrastructure when a third-party expert could have synced existing devices together.

Would Outsourcing Improve Cybersecurity & Reduce Costs?

The ideas of improved cybersecurity and cost-reduction are not mutually exclusive. In fact, better-protected data equals cost reduction. That’s largely because industry leaders must factor in the crushing financial implications of a breach.

According to a recent Coveware report, the average ransomware “payment increased by 104 percent to $84,116, up from $41,198” from the third to fourth quarter of 2019. That figure does not take into account potential lost data, downtime, and the high price of a damaged reputation.

The good news is that outsourcing provides companies with access to determined cybersecurity experience and knowledge. In-house staff members simply did not have the time, training, or experience to deliver enterprise-level cybersecurity and endpoint protections.

Industry leaders genuinely need to ask themselves the following questions. Does it make good fiscal sense to bring back a corporate IT department? Or, would you be better served by outsourcing your corporate IT department to a managed IT firm with expertise in telecom and cybersecurity?

If you are among the many organizations concerned about the post-pandemic cost of doing business, contact ICS for a consultation.