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The deployability of W2 resources, and the increasing pressures placed on IT teams has led to a drastic increase in contingent IT labor. A 2017 study shows that 90% of companies are using contingent labor to get work done, and 51% of companies use contractors “frequently or consistently.”
Why the necessary rise in labor? Your environments are getting more complicated.
And you increasingly need a broader spectrum of IT support than your salaried employees can provide. Virtualization, remote support, and cloud environments may seem like cure-all for your in-house IT ops needs, but the fact remains that 30% of IT tasks still need completion physically. Until a purely automated cloud option becomes available, you will still need physical (and technically capable) hands in your data centers.
Problem-Solving with Contingent IT Labor and Task Outsourcing
Rather than bankroll a spectrum of IT specialists that they only utilize for a fraction of the time, many companies are converting a portion of their dedicated labor to contingent labor and task outsourcing.
Having a supplementary workforce on call for each location is essential to keeping a multitude of environments running and optimized—not only for production purposes but also for the health of the company’s OPEX. Unfortunately, while contracting out for contingent IT labor solves immediate IT gap issues, it creates additional complications of its own, especially for companies with international spread.
Contingent IT labor vendors have only been addressing these problems regionally; no one is focusing (well) on building a global technology field services labor force. As a result, multi-location companies must piecemeal their contingent labor forces through independent contractors and regional vendors. This vendor sprawl introduces redundant costs, differing contract requirements, fluctuating SLAs, communication complexities, and compounded logistics.
The Logistics of Contingent Labor
Redundant Costs
Each time you contract with a new vendor, you pay a certain marginal percentage multiplied across all the regional vendors you need. Moreover, consider redundant support organizations (for project management, scheduling, etc.), and you end up with unnecessary duplication—that costs you more than just money.
Communication Complexities
Each vendor will have its own form of communication, tracking tools, project manager tolls, and level of contact. While each vendor might have its own project management team, keeping up with all the contacts and staying organized takes up a ton of your project manager’s time. It’s easy to lose things in the shuffle and for projects to sit idle while the focus is in other areas.
Inconsistent Results
With the number of vendors you need for full IT operations support, it becomes difficult to maintain quality control across all of your locations. How do you know whether each technician is qualified? Or if the work is actually getting done on time and accurately.
Skip the vendor sprawl—you need a broad-spectrum IT lifecycle support vendor who has the bandwidth to support all of your locations with one consistent solution.
A Single Vendor. One Monthly Bill. Only One Relationship to Manage.
CentricsIT On-Demand Field Services specifically addresses the IT support gaps.
We scale to your needs and conform to your ITSM processes at all your locations, with the same level of service, expertise, and with transparent pricing by country. Our extensive network of international partners and certified engineers provide comprehensive support for Networking, Deskside, and Data Center:
- Break/Fix Hardware
- Break/Fix Application/OS
- IMAC
- Operations
- Dispatch
- Recurring Services
Because of our experience in the industry (providing professional services, international maintenance, and ITAD services, among other things), we have the global bandwidth to provide full lifecycle IT support—taking the burden of IT logistics off of your PMO and reducing contract confusion.
Stop dealing with the inefficiencies of multi-vendor task outsourcing. Contact CentricsIT to see how contingent IT labor can help you augment your lean IT team.
