Should I Outsource My IT to an IT Support company?
There comes a point in many small businesses’ journeys where they need to consider outsourcing their IT support needs or hiring an internal IT manager/IT Administrative Team to handle the growing needs of their businesses hardware and software, along with the need of enhanced cyber security support to ensure their data remains safe.
Staying on top of internal IT services as your company scales in size can become an expensive headache, which is why many companies choose to seek external IT support services.
This post will help you decide why outsourcing IT support is the best choice for small businesses. We’ll take a look at the pros and cons of hiring an outsourced IT support department as well as what to look for in a top IT support company.
What Are IT Support Services?
IT support is a department or organisation that provides technical IT assistance to your company. This comes in multiple forms depending on the needs of the businesses IT systems.
4 Key Services:
General IT Support
General IT support would be the handling of It services and essential maintenance – keeping a network up-to-date or adding in new software for the business to use.
Technical IT Support
Technical IT support includes things like an IT help desk that employees can access when their hardware/software is playing up and needs an IT engineer to fix.
Another example service of technical IT support is IT disaster recovery planning – a process that looks to ensure that if an unforeseen disaster occurs, a companies data is backed up and safe, and that any hardware that could be impacted is safeguarded.
Cyber Security Services
Cyber security services are a form of IT support that looks to ensure all IT hardware/software is safeguarded from malware, ransomware or social engineering attacks. Cyber security services usually include everything from cyber security audits through to company IT security training programmes.
Business Telecommunications
Business telecommunication services look to provide businesses with state-of-the art VoIP telecommunications and top-spec business internet to ensure businesses operate as efficiently and professional as possible to internal teams and external clients. This also looks to optimise telecommunications to provide more cost-effective solutions for businesses.
Good IT support companies will offer a range of IT support services to suit different sized companies’ needs.
For example, large companies that already have internal IT resources but are wanting a more strategic view of their IT and telecoms may be interested in a Managed Partnership. A managed partnership employs the use of a virtual IT director from an IT support company.
Small to medium-sized businesses that do not currently have an internal IT department but require IT support will be more suited to essential IT support services or active maintenance contracts.
What Are The Benefits Of Outsourcing IT Support?
Cost of IT Support Services
Comparing the cost of outsourced IT support services to staffing an internal IT department, the financial benefits are clear.
The average IT engineer salary starts at £31,161, and as your business expands you will find yourself having to hire more than just one IT manager. All these extra staff members will need to be paid full-time salaries plus the associated costs.
Meanwhile, managed IT Support Service providers are much cheaper. They offer a range of solutions to suit a business’s budget. Such as flexible hourly contracts where you have a certain number of hours of support each month that roll over into the following month, so no budget is wasted. Or, you could pay for a capped monthly price for maintaining your network and providing support to your staff.
Although outsourcing IT support will cost per hour than it would for internal salaried staff members, overall, you will be paying for far fewer hours so the savings are substantial.
A good IT support company will offer you a range of options to suit your small business’ budget. Ranging from a few hours of basic help desk support each month to outsourcing the whole IT department.
It’s also important to know that good IT support companies tend to tailor IT support packages to a businesses size and IT system requirements. These IT packages are tailored in a way that allows a business to scale it’s IT support in alignment with business growth.
Improved Cyber Security
Cyber criminals are becoming more and more advanced, and keeping on top of the latest cyber security risks is a time-consuming job.
If your businesses IT infrastructure is left unsecured, your business could acquire damages of up to £115,000 from cyber attacks.
Ask yourself – Does your business follow cybersecurity best practices? Do your employees understand security risks and have adequate cyber security training? Is your firewall up to date?
The best IT support companies will be able to address these issues in their standard contract and through a cyber security and detection programme. They will have years of experience and expertise to ensure your business’ systems are safe and fully equipped with the latest cyber software to protect any confidential data.
An IT company will offer cyber security staff training as an optional service. They will be able to ensure your staff are fully up-to-date with the latest best practices. Training employees how to navigate the internet safely without putting the business at risk.
Top cyber security is one of the many benefits of outsourcing IT support and a necessity in the modern working life, given that we now , ensuring that your business is in safe hands and minimizing any potential risks or dangers.
Naturally, cyber security protection will and should always include cyber security auditing. This ensures that your IT support team have a full understanding of your businesses IT security protocols and know where the weaknesses are and what to do to fix them.
100% Staff Coverage
A major con of staffing an internal IT department is that it will fall prey to staff shortages;. If your IT manager takes a holiday or an engineer falls sick, your company will be without IT support. And in today’s business world, technology is the lifeblood of a business. If there is an issue with a computer or the network, then your staff can’t work.
Full-time business hours support needs to be available to your staff at all times. Remote outsourced IT services are often able to provide a longer spread of coverage than your own business could which means that you won’t have to find cover for holidays or sickness.
Good IT support companies offer IT Help Desk services and are able to quickly resolve issues and minimise costly downtime for your business. The contracts are good value as well as being flexible, only paying for the time they are active and you can usually choose from rolling hours-based contracts or capped, fixed fee solutions.
Hiring a remote IT support company will give you the peace of mind that any IT issues in your business will be taken care of whatever the time, or day.
Productivity
Is your small company still at a stage where you are still trying to distribute IT tasks between existing staff or even trying to stay on top of them yourself? You might be doing this as a cost cutting method, trying to operate as a lean business.
Actually though, you are wasting money: the lost time spent trying to maintain the IT network or deal with any issues is money down the drain. Time is money and any time spent away from the business’ goals is money wasted.
Outsourcing your IT needs to a dedicated managed services team will free you up to work on the business and hit targets. Any issues will get solved efficiently and quickly, leaving you and your staff free to focus on the business.
This is probably the best answer of all when it comes to the question, why outsource IT support? By outsourcing your IT needs to an established IT support company, you will be able to tap into decades of experience and IT expertise, and boosting your company’s output at the same time.
Disaster Recovery
IT disaster recovery is an important business practice concerned with any procedures a business might need to put in place to cope with any serious problems, including cyber attacks or a fire in the office that destroys the servers.
They will be able to identify critical systems and design a business continuity strategy for your IT systems. Outsourcing your IT services will allow you to work with an experienced company to build resilience into the existing IT systems and recover quickly from any potential disaster.
Final Words To ‘Why Outsource IT Support?’
Outsourcing your IT support needs to an external provider will bring many benefits to your company. These benefits include saving your business money, ensuring the safety of your IT network, increasing productivity, and freeing up more of your time. On top of this with outsourced IT support comes a wealth of specialised IT knowledge and to your company.
When looking for a good IT support company, make sure you choose a reputable company with an established reputation. Don’t be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand anything. IT is an essential part of any business these days so you need to make sure that the company charged with looking after your IT needs is up to the job.
Business Communications
Many forget that one of the core components of IT implementation is your communications network.
Business communications benefit from effective VoIP telephones and Business Wifi plans. Without these a businesses communications both internally amongst teams and with customers can be hindered and so can the customers experience with your business.
Hosted VoIP systems have a 99% uptime, with fully backed-up data centres that ensure the data is stored safely and securely.
The supports seamless communications for businesses keeping client and internal communications optimal, without losing time to maintenance and/or outages.
To find out more about our IT Support Services, check out our dedicated services page or feel free to drop us a line on 0330 3331 888. Alternatively, you can send us a quick email or request a callback.