Respondents to a recent IT Manager channel poll offered a range of solutions to solving technical problems they were having difficulties with.
While hiring external experts was an option cited by some, others preferred to try and use senior staff or reallocate internal resources first.
John Roberts, vice-president and chief of research for Asia Pacific at industry analyst Gartner, said that the way organisations deal with difficult technical problems will depend upon their maturity.
"More mature [enterprises] have started to take steps to build up a knowledge base...of problems that have been addressed before," Roberts said. "The maturity sign for an organisation is to have in place very consistent policies [for dealing with problems]."
According to Roberts, IT departments often contact the vendors regarding technical problems with both hardware and software, which may have after-sales support available.
He advises IT managers to really look at the service levels they have agreed upon with these vendors, which can be contained in the fine detail of the maintenance contract.
The type of business which an IT department supports will also impact the approach taken, Roberts said.
Scott Lawton, managing director at IT services company IT Integrity, believed that organisations could supplement internal resources by using external help.
Lawton cited a benefit of this approach was that it enabled organisations to meet existing deadlines while also dealing with unavoidable and unpredictable issues. "[The organisations] are able to decide whether or not to involve their own staff to resolve the issue, and get the external resource to backfill the internal staff," he said.
However, Lawton did caution that organisations needed to ensure the IT services company they partnered with was familiar with the client's site, people, procedures and processes. Likewise, he suggested it should be able to provide resources with an appropriate skillset, where and when required.
Outsourcing technical problems, or tasks, is not seen as the only solution for IT managers. Responses to an IT manager channel poll earlier this year found that outsourcing wasn't viewed as a substitute for well-trained, in-house technology teams.
At the time, James Longwood--employee with industry analyst Gartner--found common mistakes made by organisations outsourcing IT functions included poor communication about outsourcing plans, failure to prepare sufficient service-level agreements, and not benchmarking value for money for the organisation.
One IT manager also advised looking at whether the additional technical work was a temporary phenomenon, or something which would be ongoing.
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