How Outsourcing IT Can Make Business Sense

If you have a company with 20+ employees, you have or should have a managed IT company or on-staff IT help. We have worked with some companies who have not hired either, and this is always a situation waiting for issues when it comes to data security and protecting the network.

We have been doing managed IT services for years, and we support clients with not only IT help, but advanced security tools. We have helped make companies more efficient and secure over 25 years.

In this article we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages between having your IT staff in house, or outsourcing this vital need to a third party, and what are the pros and cons of each methodology.

 

Outsourcing IT – Advantage 1 – Varied Skill Sets

One of the most underrated advantages you get from outsourcing your IT support is the level of skill you get from having a full staff in one organization. This means you have a skill network admin, a network security specialist, cloud services experts, a full help desk, remote support, customer service, application engineers, and a host of other specific expertise within one organization.

If you rely on a generalist IT technician, or an internal IT team, you will certainly do better than not having an IT person on staff. But are they prepared to fight off the advanced cyber security attacks? Are they experts at data backup and recovery?

Can they answer all the user questions, while also keeping everything safe and running? There is generally so much to do, a support provider is able to do what a single or small IT team is unable to do.

This is probably the biggest advantage on the technical side of the equation.

 

Outsourcing IT – Advantage 2 – Consistent Costs

One of the reasons many business owners love outsourcing their IT to a managed service provider (MSP) is because it becomes a predictable pricing model, and the variability is taken out of the equation. This makes budgeting and planning for growth and acquisition much easier.

 

Outsourced IT – Advantage 3 – Scalability

This is an underrated part of managed IT. When you have new hires, you don’t have to hire a whole new person to support the team. Say you have 15 people, and this has the IT person super busy. Adding three more people would make it so you needed a second IT person, but now they are underutilized. It is a tricky choice with the traditional version of IT support.

With managed IT support, you are able to add users at a per-entity cost. This means adding the 20th person when you had 19 will raise your bill roughly 5%, not double it, because now you have to hire a second IT person to help the first.

 

Outsourced IT – Advantage 4 – Remote Monitoring

This is helpful when you have a multi-site business. With remote monitoring, there is a dashboard and a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for how each location is taken care of. This increases productivity because hardware that is lagging can be fixed, even before the request is made. This helps keep everyone moving at the speed of their growing business.

 

Outsourced IT – Advantage 5 – Focus on Your Core Business

When you use your own talent, someone has to train that talent. Who is going to make sure the new IT hire has the right tools and skills to keep your business safe? They may be much more technical than your team, but not technical enough to actually protect your business. We have seen this often when we take on a new client. They thought they were protected because their IT person told them they were good, but when we ran our enterprise tools, we found there were huge gaps in their cybersecurity policies as well as their IT infrastructure.

 

Outsourced IT – Advantage 6 – Solutions Architects

Having a solutions architect is a big deal for a company. What they are able to do is look at the technology in the marketplace and find solutions to common business problems. If you are commonly having your team do tasks in an inefficient manner, a solutions architect would help you utilize modern technology to streamline and overcome such problems. We see this is normal with sales and operations workflows, getting all the expenses for accounting, having solid KPI dashboards for leadership, etc.

When we do managed IT for a customer, we are not expecting you to know how it should all work. We offer a free consultation where we do a network assessment to ensure your company is safe and secure. We almost always find gaps. Many of these gaps won’t cost you money to fix, they are just things that can be done a little better.

We know most businesses need cybersecurity threat training. This is basic training to help people learn how not to be a victim of phishing or allow ransomware into the network. It isn’t expensive and can save your company massive amounts of money and headaches.

Other items could be just patching all the devices so they have the latest firmware versions.

We look to be a strategic partner with your business to help you achieve your goals. We look at your business needs and create a plan with you and your team to cover the most important parts of your IT. We have a whole team of experts who can knock out the most critical tasks to keep you going.

 

Disadvantages of Managed IT Support

The main disadvantage of outsourcing your IT support is your outsourced team will generally not be onsite with your team. If you are used to walking to a cubicle to get the help you need, that would no longer be the case.

Another disadvantage could be you cannot necessarily force the outsourced IT company to work on something in that instant, as you may be able to with your own employee. This can be an initial frustration.

We believe for most companies, using an outsourced IT company makes more sense because you have multiple technicians available (in case someone is sick), you have multiple expertise areas on the team, fixed rates, and the best tools because the company using the tools to support other clients. They are able to afford the best industry tools to ensure your network stays in optimal health.

We work with companies all over the USA with their networks and help provide amazing client support. We would love to help your business find the advantages of outsourcing your IT support today!