Why your Office 365 network needs professional IT support?

Microsoft’s Office 365 is now very much at the core of many small & medium business IT systems. With its enterprise class exchange messaging service and its default office suite products like Outlook, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint all available by subscription, it is difficult for some to understand why a business would need IT support outside the standard Microsoft technical support offering.

So it is worth exploring what can be expected of Microsoft technical support and what are the additional IT services a provider like Computer Troubleshooters can offer to your business.

Standard Microsoft Office 365 Technical Support

If something goes wrong with Office 365 support is a major issue – to assist you in understanding the role Microsoft support plays in helping with Office 365 should you encounter an issue, they (Microsoft) classify Office 365 technical support into 3 types:

  • Critical: Events that prevent you from accessing or using your services or data, severely impact deadlines or profitability, or affect multiple users or services. Available: 24/7, Response time: one hour
  • High: Events that affect the productivity of users but have moderate business impact, can be dealt with during business hours, or affect a single user, customer, or service. Available: business hours, Response time: no commitment
  • Non-critical: Events that have minimal service or productivity impact on the business, such as a single user experiencing partial disruption, but an acceptable workaround exists. Available: business hours, Response time: no commitment

Microsoft’s Office 365 support is focused around the operation of their centralised hosted applications that they control within their data centres. Understandably individual support for your business is deprioritised without a commitment to answer, many non-critical events taking up to 24 hours to resolve and with some lesser events updated as decided by Microsoft. They will not support non Microsoft issues experienced with your business IT systems such as networking, security, & end user support.

This type of support policy ensures Microsoft can guarantee at 99.9% service level guarantee at an application level however at an Individual business level the experience can be considerably different.

How does professional IT support facilitate an Office 365 environment?

We manage your entire IT systems requirements in a holistic manner, from planning to execution with the ongoing responsibility for your business processes, security and end users. We administer the Office 365 platform to ensure maximum efficiency and minimal disruption. Areas including;

  • Planning – Office 365 licensing, procurement & administration.
  • Setup – Each user must be defined and setup on the Office 365 platform.
  • Migration – Existing data, profiles and files need to be correctly setup.
  • Administration – Your Office 365 platform is administered remotely to manage/add/change users, policies, and security.
  • End User Support – Ongoing support & troubleshooting both remotely & on site for local users, for multiple devices and office network management.

What advantage does professional IT support provide?

Computer Troubleshooters already offers this type of skilled IT service to many of our clients for on premise equipment and we have extended our managed services to Office 365. Here’s why:

  • Cost Control: Control costs by eliminating full time staff or expensive non local IT providers to manage your IT functions. By outsourcing IT support responsibilities to a local business, you pay only for the specific tasks you need accomplished and the service level your require, at an agreed monthly cost. Administration of Office 365 can be done remotely from our offices. As a product built for the Cloud it is designed to be supported remotely, reducing support costs, and improving response times. Plus you can also limit your initial capital outlay for IT infrastructure and running expenses (such as electricity).
  • Expertise: Expertise and efficiency is immediately available by outsourcing your Office 365 Administration functions to a local expert. As a specialist we have developed tools for fast and accurate setup and migration plus we remotely manage multiple businesses on Office 365 so we are deeply knowledgeable on the platform applications. As a business owner, you won’t need to worry about an employee being trained, skilled and experienced to administer Office 365.
  • Local Service: Simply call your local Computer Troubleshooters who you know & with whom you have a personal relationship, with the peace of mind that a skilled professional is available to help locally & who understands your business. NO overseas call centres. NO Identity checks. NO remembering account numbers & passwords. NO explaining your systems to THEM every time.

Stay Ahead of the Competition with a Managed Office 365 IT environment

Computer Troubleshooters can provide professional IT services to your business to provision and administer Office 365 environments as needed, with no need to hire full time employees or large IT service providers. Let the experts at Computer Troubleshooters work with you to assess your IT needs and develop a customised plan for your business. Computer Troubleshooters can manage your IT services and you can manage your business. Give your local Computer Troubleshooters office a call and one of our computer professionals will be happy to help you. Or you can read more here.