Six ways outsourced IT reduces the stress of owning a business
Shouldn’t we just hire our own IT staff internally?” says every business at some point in their growth.
It’s easy for medium to large sized companies to assume that at a certain point during the business growth, that having a full-time, in-house IT staff member makes the most sense. After all, a staff-person in house would be available during normal working hours, they get to know the ropes of the company, and keeping your company’s systems and equipment would be their only focus.
In our almost three decades in business, we have watched this myth get debunked time and time again. We also have many clients who do have an in-house dedicated IT staff, and still rely on us to make things run efficiently. There are many ways to slice it, but here are the top 6 reasons business owners have cited as benefits of outsourcing IT:
- MORE HANDS:
When you outsource your IT to a team of local professionals, you get a whole team of brains; you have more resources, more sets of hands, and more experience to pull from; For much less than the cost to employee a full-time person, you get a whole department to pull from. And don’t be fooled, it doesn’t necessarily cost you more. Keep reading. - RESPONSIVENESS:
Trust us when we say, because we ourselves have been in-house IT staff at some point in our career, you can only do so much being one person. If you’re running department to department, and building to building, checking off work tickets, fixing broken printers, and helping update software, you have to make your rounds based on the biggest fire. In-house IT is one of the most stressful roles in a company. By the nature of the job, you are put in the position to be reactive, day in and day out. Unless you have the money to invest in an entire IT team, your one IT person is pulled around relentlessly. Not to mention after hours. When your IT is outsourced, they’re responsible for your network around the clock. Does your IT person answer their phone at 2am when the network goes down or the data backups come to a halt? - CHEAPER:
Calculate the on-average $60k salary for someone who has a degree from an accredited school, properly-trained in IT, with some of the basic software certifications. Add in the cost of health insurance and benefits, you’re looking at upwards of $100k/annually total expenditure in the US. That is to employ just one full-time IT person. Not to mention, that takes a ding out of your headcount, and requires an extra office, another workstation (or 3) and adds to your overhead. Even our biggest, most VIP clients, don’t even pay a fraction of the cost to employee a staff-person for our top-shelf, full-bells-and-whistles, emergency after hour IT services, around the clock, every calendar day. It’s much more cost effective to outsource. - TRAINING: Due to the constantly evolving nature of the IT world, to keep your IT staff up to date takes an ongoing commitment to continuing ed. As one of your most critical assets, you need them to know their job well, and be in tune with the latest advancements in software, hardware, cybersecurity, network speed, backups, etc. IT is an art and a science, and based on the highly technical nature of the niche, a diverse pool of experiences goes a long way in knowledge transfer and keeping each other up to speed. Also, when your IT person is out of pocket for a week or two a year at trainings, who takes care of your business assets?
- DIVERSE SKILLS: There’s something to be said for combined years of service and experience. As an IT company, we have individuals who specialize in certain aspects of the industry, so when a client runs into an obstacle, we can pull from our team’s collective specialties to apply the best person for the job. Unlike a one man show who works in a company IT role, we get exposure to a broad set of trends going on in the IT world. For example, a new Microsoft update last week caused one client trouble with their outlook. When another client calls with the same issue, we know what is going on because that happened with 14 of our clients last week. Or you’ve discovered malware, but are stumped. Likely we’ve already seen or experienced it and know just how to intervene quickly. Diverse skill sets let you tap into efficiencies of scale that equate to saved man hours, lost data, and lots of money.
- LIABILITY:
This is one of the most overlooked justifications for outsourcing your IT. The beauty of having a professional IT business act as your ‘in house’ IT, is that the owness and the liability falls on them. You have a barrier that protects you from misconduct, malpractice, damage of hardware or loss of data. If we mess up, we are liable. If your IT team makes a mistake, well… that’s on you.
Now that we’ve helped you understand why ALL of our clients, big and small, have trusted outsourced IT through the years, we’d love to chat with you to see if the benefits really outweigh the downsides. Let us give you a free network assessment, and we’ll show you how our team saves you time and money! Tucson’s businesses have trusted us for over two decades, and we’d love to add your business to the TCR family!