IT Support Services - Delivering solutions through outsourcing
Buoying up the channel
Learning the ropes for IT support services promotes plainer sailing for VARs and could be a genuine lifesaver. Tech sales are nothing to a customer without a guarantee of decent support to maximise the tech life span while ensuring plain sailing for the business user.
Increasingly – with hardware and now even traditional packaged software sales offering only the tiniest of margins – tech sales without due consideration paid to support and maintenance cannot benefit a reseller either. IT support sales today are less a ‘nice to have’ add-on than a genuine life preserver in a turbulent sea.
Recent statistics from ICT market research specialist IDC indicate that the global IT support services market overall, while slowing in response to the downturn, still expects to enjoy 5.2 per cent growth for 2009. Growth is set to continue, although at a slower rate than previously predicted, before starting to accelerate again in 2012.
This year’s growth estimate might be down 1.5 per cent from 2008 figures for the segment, but when compared with the 3.1 per cent decline in PC shipments year-on-year reported by IDC for the second quarter, it still looks pretty rewarding.
However, getting your IT support services shipshape is no mean feat. For larger players, the investment in training for engineers and other skilled professionals is burdensome enough – but what about small resellers with just a few specialisms?
Increasingly, customers want to simplify their billing and service level agreements with suppliers as much as possible – which can mitigate against a small reseller embarking on an expensive staff training or recruitment programme.
Partnership may be the answer. If a reseller can navigate the ocean of detail that often bedevils even the most carefully thought-out outsourcing and managed services contracts, additional revenue streams can be developed and solidified.
If the relationship with the customer is kept smooth, such partnerships can be mutually beneficial and long-lived – to the reseller, service provider partner and manufacturer as well as the end user.
Just as you cannot offshore your hairdresser or your motorcycle mechanic, the need for hands-on, skilled, onsite IT support services is not going to go away. Why not get all hands on deck for this latest opportunity?
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