Most business owners have made peace with the fact that information technology is an integral part of commerce in the 21st century. All businesses need to make decisions regarding how much to invest in different technological solutions and when. As organizations grow, their need for support and expertise also expands and the response to this need is one of two things: either hire an IT professional for internal work within the organization, or outsource IT work to a Managed Service Provider (MSP). What are the pros and cons of outsourcing, versus maintaining an internal IT staff?
Outsourcing is cheaper
There are many aspects of outsourcing to a MSP that are less expensive than employing full time internal IT staff. One reason for this is that when outsourcing IT, an organization saves on HR costs and resources, as well as employee benefits.
Costs Scale With a Managed Service Company
A MSP will bill according to how much support is needed for a particular organization. This prevents a situation where a full time employee is spending their day without anything to do, waiting for a system or a computer to break down or have a problem.
Rent A Team
When a company is relying on one or two internal IT employees, they can be very difficult to oversee. How does one judge the performance or efficacy of the employees if their supervisor does not understand the technical aspects of the job? A team of people from an IT company allows you to have access to people with different specializations; solutions experts, support experts, managed service experts and account managers.
The Training Problem
When a company first trains in an internal IT employee, who is responsible for training them? For setting job expectations? If an internal IT employee quits or is terminated unexpectedly, it can be very difficult to maintain continuity and ensure security moving forward, especially if the departing IT employee is not around to train in a new one.
Better Customer Service
The key word here is “customer.” A vendor to customer relationship is reliant upon the vendor striving to keep the customer happy. By and large, Managed IT companies are incentivized to go above and beyond to please their clients, whereas an internal employee may have incentive not to rock the boat and do the bare minimum just to keep the lights on.
Many companies that were in operation before the rise of personal computers have had a haphazard approach to their technology needs, employing the skills of an accountant who is “good with computers” or an owner’s son or daughter. Gone are the days when these do-it-yourself solutions are sufficient to keep a complex office environment up and running. If you want things done right, you should turn to the experts; call Mankato Computer Technology to set up an assessment for your organization.