Every company has a fixed budget reserves for taking care of administrative tasks. If the organisation has fewer technical resources, it becomes crucial to thoroughly think about outsourcing options.
These options may be the onsite IT support or the remote help desk.
Which one should you prefer if it’s your case?
To end up this confusion, we have a roundup of advantages and disadvantages of both.
Let’s get started with the benefits or advantages of onsite IT support.
Advantages of Onsite IT Support
Onsite IT support is an assistance provided by IT professionals on customer system physically. Outsourcing by any professional third party can bring a ton of benefits, which are:
Build Up Relations
When you talk about onsite support, it creates a scenario that involves one-on-one communication. This kind of assistance builds up connection, which is significantly important for building trust and loyalty. This kind of support boosts a proactive communication, which never let a small technical fault to become bigger. And over time, your efficiencies become greater.
Let’s say, an IT engineer visits occasionally to your office from an IT outsourcer. People who work there have trust on his troubleshooting. So, they often come up with the errors or technical issues like retrieving information when he is there, which removes the possibility of any substantial damage before it turns irreversible.
However, such issues remain unnoticed. Even, they don’t report about them to a helpdesk. But, the timely solutions better their performance & efficiency.
If the trust is not there, people won’t come for finding solutions of technical issues. It may result in the loss of reputation, efficiency, funds and customers.
Strategic Support
Any kind of professional task needs a strategy to back it strongly. Being in a great relationship, one becomes familiar with what technical problems they often face or what their needs are. This sort of information makes it easier to recommend strategic plans.
Such kind of strategies is simply designed for a better understanding of IT infrastructure, including hardware and software, data, cloud or server storage. Only onsite support professionals can have this kind of understanding because of his familiarity with your systems.
Less Reactive IT Support
Reactive support is the assistance that involves addressing problems only when they appear. The technical assistant is often onsite to proactively monitor, plan and upgrade systems. It is simply because the onsite support is less reactive because there is no such error or issue that needs immediate solutions.
Their strategic handling or troubleshooting ensures timely solution before they turns out severe.
Hardware Support
This is an exceptional advantage of this assistance. Remote assistance is incredible when it comes to updating software or addressing any operational problem.
But, the server installation or laptop configuration needs the attention of an experienced engineer. That person should be there to resolve these types of matter. This is why only onsite support is preferred for it.
Disadvantages
- Expensive Support
This support requires onsite presence of an expert, which covers end-to-end expenses of traveling and expertise. This is why outsourcing companies define their onsite IT support packages while keeping travel time and all costs into account.
- Less Availability
These kinds of professionals often remain less available because of their responsible role in the digital era. This service is not bound to 9 to 5 office timing. Rather, you have to schedule time for visiting and addressing issues. Even if they are on premises, there is a limit of time to work at once.
Apart from that, when their footfall is not possible or they may be on leave, the technology services get fully disturbed.
Advantages of Remote Helpdesk
Remote helpdesk is a kind of technical assistance that can be provided over a call or through telecommunication, as on chat, video call or phone etc..
- Inexpensive Support
It’s a cost effective method of addressing technical challenges. You need to payout less than an onsite IT engineer. Your travelling and other things that add a more cost to support services won’t be needed. Simply put, it’s the most cost-effective assistance.
- Greater Availability
The best part of this helpdesk is that you have a greater availability of an expert. Where there is onsite presence is not possible every time, this service often helps. It allows multiple users to call simultaneously in need. Multiple users can call and get assistance over a call or chat or an email right away.
Disadvantages
- Less Familiarity
Opposite to onsite support, the virtual expert cannot develop familiarity with end uses because of their limited interaction and less presence. It’s simply because they cannot be onsite. So, building up trust via face-to-face communication is a challenge.
Besides, the users may not frankly talk about their technical challenges, which may leave many small issues unresolved. Because they are less likely to speak about, these small issues become bigger over time and lead to a disaster.
The consistent happening of IT troubles may result in inefficiencies and untold problems, which later lead to business discontinuity.
- Hard to Strategise
Lack of knowledge on work culture and no familiarity with infrastructural technical needs make it difficult to prepare an informed IT strategy. Helpdesk cannot make it happen.
This kind of support is not meant for strategic working. Rather, it’s more reactive because you can access it only when there is an emergency or when the user calls.
For a strategy execution, you need a connection and a proactive approach, which are missing in the helpdesk support.
- No Support for Hardware
As you cannot expect a physical assistance, the hardware issues remain unresolved. This is one of the major drawbacks of this type of support.
Wrap up
Preferring between onsite and remote helpdesk is really challenging. However, both are complementary to each other. If helpdesk is effectively available all times, onsite support brings familiarity and builds connection that leads to a better and personalised experience.
You may not want to compromise on advantages that both of these supports provide. Choosing a bit of both can be a wise idea because standalone service cannot bring you that much profit as both of them can make.
Summary
Preferring the best one from onsite support and helpdesk is really hard because both come with their own unique advantages and disadvantages. The former is great at setting up connections and executing IT strategy whereas the latter is exceptionally inexpensive and all time available support service.