Many companies are realizing the value of a vCIO role. IT infrastructure outsourcing is a concept that has been around for some time. Known for technology and engineering, workstations and servers, the idea of outsourcing your IT needs is familiar to many businesses. However, there is a new concept of managed infrastructure services that comes with an effective and functional IT strategy that has made many companies consider outsourcing technology to other needs: Virtual CIO (vCIO) .
vCIO Services Strengthen Your Business
A virtual CIO – or vCIO – is an experienced professional that companies can use to strengthen and extend their IT strategy. They bring their personal experience and network of technical expertise to work with you to find the best IT solution for your business. vCIOs sit at your table and focus on understanding your business and how technology can support your plans and goals to help make your business successful.
Here are a few ways virtual CIO services can benefit your company:
Benefits of Virtual CIO Services
1. Develop an IT Strategy
vCIO services help many companies improve their IT operations. To be successful and work as efficiently as possible, you need an integrated and comprehensive IT system that can expand and grow with changing business needs. With vCIO, you have a partner with the technical knowledge and strategic expertise to work with you on your strategy, your IT budget, and find ways IT can help you achieve your overall goals.
The goal of the vCIO role is to optimize your IT strategy so that you and your business use technology in the most efficient, cost-effective and productive way to support growth and profitability. Your VCIO works with you to better understand how your business defines success and identify your 5-10 year goals. This information helps virtual CIOs develop ways to effectively implement IT across your business while supporting initiatives across all departments.
2. Identifying New Opportunities
Technology is always changing and offers new opportunities for business. The vCIO serves as a project leader embedded in a rapidly changing technology world. They can help identify new developments that reduce costs, increase efficiency and can change the way you do business. These vCIO services allow you to find and maintain the competitive advantage and use the latest technology. This allows your business to take advantage of the new functionality and stand out from the competition with other selling points such as speed or price.
Additionally, vCIOs can help build business cases for new solutions. They can analyze and share the return on investment that new technology can bring to your business. A vCIO can also work with you to uncover new opportunities from your current technology to get the most out of your existing assets.
3. Planning and Managing Major IT Projects
IT project planning for initiatives, such as operating system migrations or major desktop upgrades, can be time-consuming and require a high level of thorough management and planning to execute successfully. This can create bandwidth problems for businesses of any size. vCIO can be used for routine maintenance tasks to ensure that the task is completed without requiring any pre- or post-task input. This change can reduce the cost and time of those big projects and leave your company with more money later.
4. Creating Contingency Plans
Even with special prevention measures, it is rare for something to work well 100% of the time, and technology is no exception. How your business reacts when things are going well can determine the outcome of an accident. By having a solid security plan in place, you can save your business countless amounts of time and money. Planning for the unexpected can be a challenge for anyone without technology. The ability to see worst-case scenarios and know how to plan for them is where vCIO comes in.
vCIO services can help your organization implement outages, disaster recovery, information security breaches, and other initiatives to ensure issues are resolved quickly and efficiently, with minimal impact on the organization.
5. Managing IT Vendors
Many companies have multiple IT vendors and can only outsource a few of their IT services or their entire department. This can be a daunting task, especially for companies that don’t have an in-house technical coordinator. With technology systems such as virtual CIOs, they can manage vendor relationships and ensure that any changes and implementations are successful. vCIO can analyze your needs and compare prices to regional and national averages to ensure you’re getting the best deal and your provider isn’t overcharging you.
They can also properly vet and evaluate potential candidates for technical ability and company fit so that your company can get the most out of its IT.