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Guest Post: Focus Your Efforts with Outsourcing

Working on a large scale project typically means having to juggle a lot of different challenges; managing a project is effectively about being able to focus on an end goal, while finding the most efficient way to make use of staff and resources. Losing sight of this focus can lead to high overheads and budget overspends. How, then, can outsourcing part of your project management process to a specialist IT company help you to get things done faster, and what kind of solutions can be created for dealing with day to day issues?

Overall Infrastructure

Outsourcing for project management can mean hiring a specialist company to design or update your company′s infrastructure; this can mean retooling and updating your IT system if it′s causing slow downs, as well as creating new user and administrative privileges. A server might also be adapted to handle more data processing, while security features can be updated remotely to handle confidential data.

Collaboration

By outsourcing, you can receive new collaborative software that can be developed to suit your business′s needs; this can mean a company building a virtual workspace where you can collaborate with other people on a project. This option is ideal if your project involves freelance workers, or employees that cannot make it into the office. Invoices can be issued and paid, and a timeline created of the progress and targets for a project; this collaborative software can also be designed to store documents and presentations, as well as any minutes from physical meetings.

Troubleshooting

Another benefit to outsourcing part of your project management duties to another company is that you can receive assistance on backing up and dealing with server problems; having a reliable back up can be essential if you experience a hard drive crash, while having a dedicated help line that knows your system means that you can get a project back up and running quickly while IT issues are being resolved.

Software and App Development

While taking charge of the overall vision of a project, you might also want to outsource some of the software and app development for it – this means finding professionals that can rapidly produce software for a particular part of a project – this might mean writing a program to speed up accounting, or designing a website and app that can be used as part of a project′s final delivery. Expert IT professionals outside your company can often produce these elements faster than running it through internal staff.

Remote Access

Projects can also be made more efficient to manage by outsourcing to a company that can design remote access systems for you and staff to use – as with developing a virtual desktop and server, this can involve making sure that you can access projects via smartphones and tables, and that the correct security levels are created to prevent information from being leaked. Other options that can be explored through remote access for projects include getting a VoIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol client set up so you can work together outside the office.

Rob James recommends www.computrad.co.uk for IT Managed Services. He setup business 10 years ago and as it has grown, IT support has become increasingly important. Rob can be found blogging about both online and offline marketing strategies.

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