Outsourcing IT Support

Outsourcing your IT Support or some of your IT Services can help you focus on your business, get access to greater knowledge or resources on IT, information systems, or knowledge systems, and reduce your overall IT costs.  For Small to Medium sized businesses outsourcing is often considered for different reasons than those important to a large business in that an SME can use outsourcing to access greater resources and expertise than they could employ internally whereas a larger company may outsource to reduce costs via economies of scale.  In both situations it allows the company to concentrate on their core business and deliver to their customers.  Cnik specialises in supporting Small to Medium sized businesses by providing a local outsourcing service that lets you concentrate on your core business and lets Cnik do the same.

What is outsourcing?

In academic terms outsourcing is the practice of using outside firms to handle work currently performed within a company, or to put it another way, getting someone else to provide a service to you rather than doing it yourself.  If you are an accountancy or solicitors firm, why would you try and run an IT department to support your accountancy firm? You don't create your own electricity supply company or your own plumbing and heating engineers department do you! A business should concentrate on delivering the services they are expert in, and buy-in an IT service from a company that specialise in IT.  You probably outsource many of your other services already, like HR, payroll, and telephones systems, so why not IT.

So what is the difference between general IT Support and Outsourcing?  Very little in small and medium sized business; it is just a different way of describing a similar thing although in Outsourcing there is a greater emphasis on the supplier managing the overall experience.  If you currently have another company deliver part for your IT system then, such as the accountancy system support, then it is effectively outsourced. If the supplier only responds to your requests instead of taking an active role in preventative maintenance and forming your ongoing strategy then you are not getting a good service.  In Outsourcing you should develop a mutually beneficial partnership with your supplier rather than maintaining a traditional cost based bargaining client / supplier relationship.

What can I Outsource to Cnik?

It really depends on your business but these are some options that Cnik can assist with.  Please see our services page for more details on individual services.

• General IT Support / Services.  Cnik can supply your whole IT needs within the range of our current services.  Cnik could provide your helpdesk process to handle initial calls from your staff (Level 1 Support) or could come in at the stage when greater knowledge was needed.  If you currently have an in-house IT staff there can be some scope for transfer of existing staff to Cnik and placement of staff back into the company on a contract basis.  It really does depend on your business needs.
• Specialised IT Projects
• IT Director / IT Manager / IT Strategy.  Small to medium sized businesses can often support a small IT team but in being small that IT team can have difficulty in supporting the full range of the IT needs.  You might have one or two IT technicians that keep you going on a daily basis but do they have the knowledge, business, and communication skills to assist in the direction of the company regarding IT.  Cnik can provide IT Directorial / Management on a part-time basis for companies that would benefit from that additional knowledge.
• Information Systems.  For a SME to choose an Information System and implement it within the business is a complex and resource intensive task.  Cnik have the expertise in Information Systems and can assist you in the initial needs assessment, the choice of the right product, or the Project Management of an Information Systems project based on Microsoft technology.  Please see our Information Systems section for more details

Why Outsource to Cnik?

At Cnik, we really believe we can offer you a better service.  We are a small but growing business that values key clients and knows that by building an excellent reputation we can grow to offer our services to more customers .

• Cnik are a registered Microsoft Partner and a Certified Microsoft Small Business Specialist, a Cisco Select Certified Partner and a VMware VIP Professional Partner
• Cnik is managed by staff that have managed IT and IS systems in small to medium sized businesses.
• Cnik will only provide what you need.  We can discuss the ambitions for your business and suggest improvements in your systems with no obligation. 
• Cnik will try to keep your costs as low as possible.  PC and Network hardware,  Microsoft software, or our services are not free but we believe what we deliver provides good business value.  There are many studies on the Internet about the value of 'open source' software but many conclude that the overall cost of support and interoperability is greater with 'open source'.

Outsourcing can set you free of the burdens of managing your IT infrastructure and allow you to develop your core business.