IT Support – To Outsource or Not?  5 Things to Consider Before You Decide.

by Jeandre de Beer

These days, almost every business in the world relies on Information Technology – in fact it can be the very backbone of your company.

So you need to ensure it works to its fullest efficiency and capacity, and supports the health and growth of your business.

The question is: Who do you trust to maintain your IT systems, and to avoid glitches and shutdowns that could have significant effects on your bottom line?

Is it best to employ IT support staff in-house, or outsource to a specialist IT support company?

Here are 5 things you need to consider before making this important decision:

 1. You Want Highly Competent and Well-Trained People

This really goes without saying, but how often do employers hire IT professionals without really knowing if they are suitable for the job? If your core business is not IT, chances are you and your managers are not IT experts.

The person you hire may have specialist knowledge in one particular area, but fall down in others.

When you outsource your IT staff, you can be sure the expert sent to the job is the right person for it. Where would you find the top IT experts?

That’s right – working for an IT company! Outsourcing ensures you get the best trained and most experienced IT professionals to work on your business.

2. It Should be Cost-Effective

At first glance it may seem more cost-effective to employ an IT specialist, but is this always the case? It may be a false economy.

Hiring another employee obviously means having to deal with related costs such as wages, annual leave, HR issues and so on.

What would happen if one of your two-person IT support team is on holiday, and the other is sick?

Your biggest expense may be training. To stay ahead of the game in the fast-moving world of IT, your IT support staff will need on-going training, and that comes at a cost.

Employing a mid-level technician is not cheap, and if you need an experienced IT manager, you can expect to pay much more.

When you outsource, it means you pay someone to hire specialist support staff, train them, supply them with resources and equipment, and look after their HR needs, all at no additional cost to you.

This means you can focus on your core business and not on the business of IT support. Why not let the experts deal with IT, so you can get on with running and growing your business?

3. Can an Existing Staff Member be an Effective IT Expert?

What about training one of your current staff members to help with general IT issues?

Many companies find that as they grow, a knowledgeable member of staff ends up becoming the IT go-to person. This seems odd, as they were probably not trained to do specialist IT work. Why would you pay someone to do a job they are not trained for?

This is what typically happens: an employee known to be “good with computers” gets bombarded with requests for help whenever anything goes wrong, which takes them away from their core duties, affecting productivity.

If your sales manager spends more time helping staff with computer problems than selling, then you know it’s time to make some changes!

Perhaps they would be better utilised doing what they were employed for in the first place.

If you currently use a staff member to assist others with IT problems, it’s more than likely that your IT strategy is based on a ‘break/fix’ scenario.

This means that by the time you know there is a problem, your business has probably already been affected, and you have you may have lost productivity and profits.

Outsourcing your IT support allows your people to get on with the jobs they were hired to do.

4. Scaling and Business Efficiency

There comes a time in every company when you realize you have more IT support calls coming in than your team can handle, or you notice that the numbers of calls are much less than a year ago.

When this happens, you either expand your IT support team, or downsize, to maintain efficiency. This means you either need to add to your technical support – and find the right people quickly – or go through the awful and complex process of downsizing.

Downsizing creates many new problems. It is not just a case of letting someone go because there’s no work for them. Think about all the HR and legal issues of retrenching staff and what that does for the reputation of your company. What about the redundancy pay-outs?

If you outsource your technical support, you have the option to scale up or down – without causing you headaches. The IT support company is the one who expands or reduces your team, not you. This removes you from the process and saves you a lot of time, money and stress.

5. Quality Control

You may think that having someone working for you permanently would result in better quality work – but is that really true?

An outsourced professional and reputable IT company should deliver superior results. That company has got a reputation to uphold and they will do what it takes to keep their clients happy – after all, they want to keep your business!

A good IT company will provide you with easy access to their manager to ensure quality standards are met, and any issues resolved promptly.

Conclusion

Outsourcing your IT Support makes sense. Your IT service provider can focus on issue-avoidance by proactively monitoring your systems.

Problems can be identified and fixed before they affect your business, eliminating any downtime and ensuring your IT services are always working for you, and always running at peak efficiency.

So if you are deciding whether or not to outsource your IT support, consider these points and ask yourself: What’s best for my business?