Outsourcing Dynamics Support to Overcome Your Technical Debt

A technical debt is a metaphor to describe compounding shortcuts and workarounds in a software system, caused by the cumulation of shortcuts and workarounds. Quick and easy short-term solutions result in faster production, but incur a risk of poor performance issues and increasing costs in the long term. Often, racking up a technical debt becomes unavoidable due to limited IT resources and efforts to keep up with the speed of the market. However, it’s possible to dig your company out of a technical debt. One way is to leverage partnerships, such as a Managed Services Partner, to help your IT department to focus on strategic business initiatives, like innovation, production and methodically reversing your technical debt.

Akin to monetary debt, technical debt accumulates its own form of interest. The costs in suffering with a technical debt manifests in time spent in fixing flaws rather investing in ways to make your company more competitive. Here are some costs of a technical debt:

Frustration and inconvenience - Temporary solutions that were convenient at first, grow into frustrating and inconvenient solutions as workarounds pile on top of each other. In systems carrying a high level of technical debt, it is common to experience unexpected functionality issues, multiple error messages and other unhappy surprises.

Fragmented system - Multiple one-off shortcuts create a fragmented system that doesn’t integrate well. This causes unnecessary rework.

Lack of agility in a fast-paced market - Diverting IT resources to repay a technical debt slows a company’s ability to react to the pace of the market. Your company suffers from loss of business opportunity when you lack a well-maintained system. IT resources are invested in activities that address your technical debt instead of opportunities to create new revenue.

Security vulnerability - Security can suffer as shortcuts in infrastructures are implemented without thought to security. Frequently, security is perceived as a technical burden, but your company’s level of security can make or break your business.

Outsource Dynamics support to overcome your technical debt

Outsourcing maintenance can prevent technical debt, or if your company is already in a technical debt, a managed service partner can help you overcome that debt. Look for a managed services partner who has specific expertise aligned with your company’s existing systems. HSO Global Managed Services focuses on Microsoft Dynamics support. This kind of in-depth knowledge helps your company make well informed decisions to prevent and heal a technical debt.

IT departments are tasked with systems maintenance, Microsoft application optimizations, resolving support tickets from within the company and developing innovations intended to support business critical initiatives. That said, it’s easy--and understandable--that quick shortcuts are intended to keep day to day operations running.

Technical debt can occur in three areas: architecture, infrastructure and/or application. And it forms because of an IT department’s limited resources. In fact, the top three reasons cited for a technical debt: architecture choice, lack of awareness, and time pressure. These three factors are interrelated: flaws in hasty architectural choices are a result of time pressures; lack of awareness stem from pressures to invest time in areas outside of maintenance; and time pressures compound when an imperfect technological architecture slows down productivity.

On average, businesses spend 80% of their time reacting to support and maintenance issues instead of other projects, such as reversing an existing technical debt. A global managed services partner takes care of support tickets that end users typically ask the IT department to resolve. Moreover, Global Managed Services takes care of:

• Implementing regular updates
• Microsoft application optimization
• Ensures system stability when updating
• Constant monitoring critical systems

If your company finds itself needing to get out of a technical debt, a managed services partner, can help free up your IT department’s resources, helping to relieve the time pressures that got your company into the technical debt it found itself in the first place. Global Managed services complements your existing IT team by:

• Offering availability 24/7 across global time zones
• Dedicated subject matter experts to quickly resolve support tickets
• Manages Microsoft software licensing
• Provides notification when new releases are available
• Recovers data in the event of a disaster

One of the biggest constraints that lead to a technical debt is limited employee resources and time pressures. However, the market doesn’t slow for your business and your company can’t afford to be left behind. While resolving immediate challenges with shortcuts may be tempting, quick fixes aren’t the only way to resolve today’s issues to move on to more business-critical responsibilities. Leveraging a partner to ensure the health of your infrastructure and applications can keep your IT department debt-free.