Businesses looking to improve their service delivery with limited time, budget, and talent have another option besides managed IT services: staff augmentation. This approach allows businesses to outsource staff rather than specific services, providing a more generalized approach. Skilled professionals can be leveraged to tackle top-priority tasks without overtaxing internal staff. According to Rollinson, there are clear benefits to both managed IT services and staff augmentation, and they don’t exist in isolation. She recommends leveraging both in concert to address mission-critical efforts more effectively. Cost is a critical factor in managed IT service adoption, and Rollinson stresses the importance of detailed and thorough contracts to realize budget benefits. Ensuring return on investment means making sure that providers are delivering on SLA requirements for operational uptime, ongoing upgrades, application support, and timely ticket response. Rollinson also notes that it’s critical to build in room for growth and recommends hiring an IT vendor management professional to manage multiple contracts in real-time. IT managed services deliver technology expertise on demand, but ensuring outsourced adoption meets cost and ROI expectations requires detailed documentation and regular evaluation to deliver ongoing IT innovation.