There is a massive demand for IT outsourcing services, with the industry set to be worth $682.3 billion by 2027. This staggering figure highlights the importance of these types of services for businesses competing in the modern era.
But what are the pros and cons of outsourcing your IT services? You may have always handled your IT requirements in-house, and are unsure whether it’s a good idea to seek external help with this side of your business.
This can be a tough decision, and we’re going to take an in-depth look at the benefits and downsides of hiring an outsourced IT company.
Read on to learn more.
IT Outsourcing Pros
With IT outsourcing being so popular, it’s clear there must be plenty of advantages to using these types of services. Let’s take a look at some of the best reasons to use a managed IT provider.
Reduced Costs
One of the most significant benefits of hiring an outsourced IT company is the potential cost savings. The average IT Professional salary is $65,726, meaning employing a team of these specialists could be extremely expensive.
You also need to take into account the cost of finding and hiring IT experts. This could include paying for ads on job boards, employing a recruitment agency, and paying your HR department to handle the hiring process.
The costs also don’t end there. You’ll need to give your new employees the right technology to carry out their tasks and have office space for them to work. You may also want to pay for additional training for staff to develop their skills.
In contrast, when you hire an outsourced IT business, they are responsible for employing their own workers. A managed IT firm will also ensure its staff has up-to-date industry knowledge. In addition, they will pay for vacation pay, sick pay, and any performance-related bonuses.
This means you can keep your costs low, while still getting the advantages of having a highly-skilled workforce to take care of your IT needs.
Wide Range of Expertise
Technology changes rapidly, and it can be challenging to maintain a team of employees that has all the knowledge and skills that you need to complete client projects. This could be because a client has a specific request that your current team doesn’t know how to fulfill, or a new type of software might have been released that your employees aren’t familiar with.
In these scenarios, it may not be cost-effective to bring a new member of staff on board if you won’t necessarily require them when a project ends. But, when you work with a managed IT company, they will have employees with a varying range of skill sets. You can ask for the staff member with the knowledge you need to work on your project until it is finished.
This can allow you to offer a wider range of services to clients and increase your sales revenues.
Enhanced IT Security
IT security is crucial to keeping your systems operating efficiently and protecting your business’s and your customers’ data. Should customers not be able to access your website at any time of the day or night, they could become dissatisfied and decide to move to a competitor. If you were to suffer a data breach and lose your client’s personal information, this could lead to clients leaving your firm and also cause severe reputational damage.
However, an IT outsourcing company can evaluate your current system security arrangements and look for weaknesses that hackers could exploit. Online security specialists can then give you advice on how to make your systems more robust, and help you implement a plan to secure your IT setup.
As new cyber threats can emerge at any time, this should be an ongoing process. By outsourcing this task to specialists, you can benefit from their expertise in dealing with the latest online security issues.
Disaster Recovery
Unfortunately, sometimes your systems may crash. This may happen by accident, or a cyber attack could breach your online defenses. This could lead to you losing access to your business information, and you’ll want to make sure this issue is resolved as quickly as possible.
An outsourced IT provider can help to safeguard your information and make it easier to get your systems back up and running in the shortest timeframe after an incident. This could involve finding the source of the problem, resolving the issue, and uploading your information so it is available to your workforce.
Ensuring this is done at the earliest opportunity can minimize disruption and allow you to keep serving your customers.
Stay Compliant
When you’re running a busy company, it can be difficult to keep up with every industry change. Sometimes this may not be vital, but when it comes to compliance, this could have serious consequences for your business and customers could be concerned if you are not following the correct procedures.
This can be another important advantage of hiring a managed IT provider. Their team will know about any regulations that have changed, and be able to give you guidance on how to stay compliant. This can allow you to focus on bringing new clients on board, while IT experts look after this part of your business.
IT Planning
While it can be expensive to employ IT professionals, buying hardware and software can also cost your business a lot of money. The computers you currently have may be outdated in the coming years, and you could need to use a considerable portion of your budget to keep your hardware current. Your software could also become obsolete, and you could need to pay high fees to get access to the latest tools on the market.
But, if you plan ahead you may be able to keep using state-of-the-art hardware and software while you spread the cost. This could involve upgrading different computers at various predetermined stages. Or, you could invest in software that is likely to receive free updates for the foreseeable future.
An IT professional can help you make a cost-effective plan that could future-proof your systems and save you money over the long term.
Around-the-Clock Support
Consumers are more demanding than ever. However, if you want to grow your business, you need to not only meet their needs, but exceed them. Therefore, you can’t afford IT issues to affect your network at any time of the day or night.
If there were to be a problem when your IT department was not in the office, it might not be noticed for several hours, possibly upsetting your clients.
This is when having an outsourced IT service at your disposal can be invaluable. Their team can monitor your systems 24/7, 365 days a year, allowing them to respond to any faults in an instant. Not only can they resolve issues quickly, but they can also put solutions in place so the problems don’t reoccur.
If this sounds like a benefit you need to have for your business, contact Be Structured managed IT services. Their IT specialists can provide around-the-clock outsourced IT services to keep your systems operating at peak efficiency.
Scalability
It’s not easy to have exactly the right number of staff available at any given time. For example, you could win a big contract and need to hire additional employees to get the work done. This could mean you go to considerable effort and expense to bring more workers on board.
But, if the contract ends, you might then need to downsize your workforce. This can be a stressful and time-consuming process if you are hiring in-house employees. In contrast, if you are working with an outsourced IT provider, you can pay for only the number of workers you need depending on your workload.
By working with a flexible managed IT provider, you could scale your IT department up or down depending on your current needs. This can be an excellent way to predict and control your costs to stop them from spiraling out of control.
Improved Satisfaction Levels
Working with an outsourced company can increase both your employees’ and your customers’ satisfaction levels. Your staff could appreciate having the option to call external specialists whenever they have a problem they are struggling to solve.
Your employees might also be able to hand over some of the IT tasks they find repetitive and tedious to a managed IT provider. This could give them more time to concentrate on work that they find more interesting.
Your customers may also notice an improvement in your services. If there is less downtime, and a faster response to queries, this could be a significant benefit to them when working with your company.
This could result in a massive boost to your firm’s reputation and sales figures.
IT Outsourcing Cons
Although there are a plethora of positive reasons to use an outsourced IT provider, there can also be some downsides. Let’s find out a bit more.
Loss of Control
One of the main concerns businesses can have about outsourcing their IT services to another company is that they could lose control of how their IT department is run. But, this may be more of a perception than a reality. While it is true your external IT team will not be your employees, you can work closely with a managed IT firm to ensure you are happy with how they carry out your required tasks.
For example, you could explain precisely how some crucial outsourced IT support jobs should be carried out, and ask for these details to be put in the contract. If these requests are reasonable, a professional firm will be happy to accommodate them.
You can also ask for frequent updates regarding your IT systems. When you know how your IT network is performing each day, it can give you peace of mind that this aspect of your business is under control.
Coordination Issues
It’s possible there could be some communication problems when your internal staff and our external IT team begin working together. However, this doesn’t have to be a major issue. If you have clear guidelines set out from the start, staff will know how to contact each other and stay in touch.
This could include using real-time messaging software or support ticketing systems. You could also hold regular team meetings, whether in person or online. This could allow both sets of employees to get to know each other better and encourage people to pick up the phone when there is an IT matter to be discussed.
Although there could be some coordination issues at the start, you could find these are easily resolved when both teams get used to working together.
IT Outsourcing Could Be Right for Your Business
Now that we’ve reached the end of our IT outsourcing guide, you can weigh up the pros and cons to determine if this would be a good option for your business. Benefits such as reducing costs, increasing online security, and having 24/7 support all year round can be vital services for some companies. While there can be issues with having less control and ensuring your internal IT staff can work effectively with an outsourced service, these problems can be easily solved.
Just remember to work with a high-quality IT partner that can help you make the transition with a minimum of hassle.
While you decide if outsourcing your IT services is right for your business, check out more of our helpful blog posts.
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