All business leaders nowadays know Information Technology (IT) is a core function for any business. To be effective though, expertise, strategy and security are critical for business success in current competitive landscape.
However, have you correctly assessed your IT need and ability, are you attempting or assuming to take on all the work yourself. The most successful business owners know when to delegate work to the experts, IT probably one of them.
Here are a few reasons why it might be better for your business to outsource your IT, rather than tackling it internally. These points of view are particularly relevant small and medium sized companies (SME) as effective usage of resources is a critical part for their business continuity and competitiveness.
1. Access to quality expertise
For most SME, Information Technology is definitely not the core competency, they should have one another very unique specialty and strength. While these SME may not be justified to have their own IT department, through outsourcing your IT probably the only way to let them accessing to quality expertise and the latest technology to benefit your business. IT service companies deal with the same sort of problems on a regular basis – so they will make sure you’re going a wrong way to address your IT issues. A qualified IT expert should be able to give you the best and latest information to tackle your technical needs.
2. Reliable technical support
Outsource IT support may provide more reliable technical support than internal IT staff. The reason is the pressure from the contract. For sure, outsourcing team will worry more about their income than internal staff. Their contract must be maintained by performance and it could be stopped easily without any compensation. Providing that you hire a qualified IT support company, it mostly will provide more reliable and better support than your in-house IT staff. This is particularly true for small and medium sized companies with small team of IT staff.
3. Focus on your core company activities
Businesses have shoestring budgets and limited resources, and our brains have limited time and attention to tackle everything! Outsourcing your IT can be a practical way to free things up and shifts your focus back to the core business – where it belongs. Some business owners will assume some staff with certain IT knowledge can do the jobs, for example, accountant, engineer, and so on. However, they could be amateur and definitely unable to provide the same level of performance to a true IT professional.
When your focus isn’t on the core strategy of your business, day-to-day operations can easily fall in a heap. Important tasks get pushed the backburner and let’s face it, no one wants to spend hours troubleshooting software, hardware and user issues when there’s bigger fish to fry.
Moreover, do you think a staff is willing to do many different tasks? No. it is with extra pressure and hatred task. Management style liked this will just increase the turnover rate of their staff and eventually hurt the productivity of the whole company.
4. Reduced Business Spending
There’s a common misconception that outsourcing IT is expensive. However, in reality, most people are rational that they can think about cost-effectiveness, cost justification, cost-benefit relationship. Why not on thinking about IT?
Quality is key and the saying you get what you pay for is generally correct, but outsourcing is actually a very cost-effective tool.
Savings are significant for businesses – especially if you’re only small, so finding ways to reduce expenditure is always a priority.
Multiple studies have shown that outsourcing IT services saves you money. Businesses wouldn’t do it if the costs weren’t lower and the quality of service wasn’t jeopardised.
Outsourcing also makes costs predictable, which means you’re in a better position to budget resources accordingly.
Managed IT support is a contract with fixed monthly charges which includes regular maintenance and everyday fixes to hardware, computer software or network devices. And because outsourcing IT companies will usually charge less for support than a business would pay a provider directly, the savings are beneficial. Moreover, as you know, this contract cannot be easily stopped if the provider does not meet the standard. What cost would you suffer to dismiss a disqualified employed staff?
5. Start to build your modern organization structure
The majority of business owners would observe a dramatic change in business during the past 10 years. If you want to give your business a competitive edge, can you still work on an old school of thoughts for management?
Nowadays, people are talking about lean organization structure, minimality for everything apart from sales. When business owners think about their change to make their business more competitive, IT is probably one of the first candidates to be changed. Are you agree? Yes, it is and this is proven from experience. This is the nightmare for IT people but this is a reasonable strategy for small and medium sized companies. You may not cut all the IT staff but you will think about a smaller team. Outsourcing is just a solution to let you build this modern organization with ease and lowest cost.