Relying on in-house IT staff may seem like the easy option, but it’s often far from the ideal solution. Outsourcing your IT support to a specialist provider can be simpler and cheaper, and also bring some added benefits you might not have considered. Here are five reasons to bring in the experts.
It’s Less Expensive
Using an outsourced company for your IT usually saves you money in two ways. Firstly, you’re only paying the fee rather than having to worry about all the additional costs that accompany a salaried employee. Not only do you save the money that would normally go on social security taxes, unemployment taxes, workers compensation policies and any benefits you need to include to attract staff, but you also escape the administration hassles.
The other saving is a matter of efficiency. Outsourcing means paying for exactly the level of service you need. That makes more sense than having to choose between being understaffed and not getting the work done, or running the risk of IT employees not having enough work to fill their schedule but still drawing a salary.
Access to an Entire Team
No matter the experience and talent of a single IT worker, there’s a limit to how much they know. IT is a hugely diverse field with countless areas of special expertise from networking to malware to hardware to operating system updates. Even if you’re lucky enough to recruit staffers who can turn their hand to everything, it’s simply impossible that they’ll be experts in every task.
By outsourcing to an IT company you’ll get access to a much wider range of expertise. The beauty is that whatever task comes up, the chances are the IT company will have a staff member who specializes in it. Matching an in-house IT department against an outsourced department can be as lopsided as playing a football game where one side isn’t allowed any substitutions. They might have 11 perfectly competent players who, but they’ll struggle against an opposition that can always switch to the right line-up for the play in question. (We’ll leave it to you to decide which IT roles count as the special teams units.)
Access to the Latest Trends in Technology
The only certainty in IT is that things keep on changing. Some changes are positive such as improved software that works more efficiently or powerfully. Some changes are less welcome such as malware creators and cybercriminals getting ever more creative in their attacks.
Unfortunately it can be tough making sure in-house staff keep up with these changes. Because they only work in your set-up, they won’t get the experience of developments elsewhere. One option is to send them to conferences or training course, but that can rack up direct costs in fees and travel, and indirect costs in lost productivity.
Using an outsourced IT support service means keeping up to date without these hassles. The bigger talent pool means a wider range of experience. Another benefit is that the outsourcing company’s staff work with a wider range of clients of different sizes and business sectors, meaning they have a broader knowledge of what’s happening in the IT field. It’s also far more efficient for an IT service provider to keep staff trained and educated in the latest tools and threats.
An Outside Perspective
In any business it’s easy to get caught in a routine and doing things the way they’ve always been done. Sadly the same is true of in-house IT departments. There’s a real risk your staff will spend so much time on maintenance and keeping everything up and running that they don’t have the time – or the initiative – to think about how you could change and improve your IT operations.
Using an external IT support service is a perfect opportunity to get an outside perspective. For example, the company’s consultants could spot a security flaw that was effectively a blind spot for your own staff who are too closely tied up in your operations to look at things from an attacker’s mindset.
Alternatively, an external company might come up with solutions and new software options that employees simply wouldn’t have been aware of.
24/7/365 Support When You Need it the Most
One of the biggest barriers to covering your IT needs in-house is the clock. It’s difficult to efficiently match your IT staff’s availability to the needs of your workforce as a whole. This can be an ongoing issue such as when you have a few employees who work evenings or weekends, but not enough to be worth having IT staff on call during these hours. It can also be a one-off issue: you can almost guarantee a particularly disruptive problem will strike right when your key IT employees take a vacation.
Using an outsourced IT provider will often take care of these problems by vastly expanding the availability of IT support. In some cases you even get access to a true 24/7 help desk (through the phone, online or both) that means a solution is always on hand.
To find out more about these and other benefits of outsourcing your IT, contact us today for a Free IT Assessment.