Advantages of Outsourcing IT in 2019
Outsourcing IT is sometimes seen as an IT management strategy for small companies to maximize the level of IT service they receive for as little cost as possible. While this is certainly a major benefit of outsourcing IT, it’s not the only reason companies—of all sizes—should consider outsourcing their IT services.
7 Benefits of Outsourcing IT
Outsourcing IT is about more than just covering your bases while reducing employee costs. Outsourcing can also maximize the level of expertise your company can receive while increasing security, ensuring compliance, improving monitoring and support, and reducing hardware & systems costs.
1. Round-the-Clock Monitoring
When you hire an in-house IT manager to oversee your company’s IT, you’re at the mercy of business hours, sick days, vacations, and workloads. However, when you choose to outsource IT you benefit from the round-the-clock monitoring and 24/7 crisis support that can come only from a company that has made it their business to make sure your IT has as little downtime as possible.
2. Increased Expertise
Hiring an outsourced IT company to manage your IT also has the added benefit of improving the level of expertise you experience. When you hire in-house, you have the limited knowledge of one person or a small team of people. While your IT manager may do their best to stay on top of the latest technological advancements, it’s difficult for any single IT mind to specialize in everything IT-related. That’s why outsourced IT companies will have multiple experts on staff with experience in hardware, software, networks & servers, technical support, and more. In addition, outsourced IT companies make it their business to stay up-to-date on the latest technology, trends, security risks, compliance factors, and other details. When you outsource your IT, you get the benefit of all of these experts at a fraction of the cost of bringing similarly-experienced experts in-house.
3. Scalable Services
As a business owner or manager, you know the difficulty that comes with trying to hire the perfect person for the job and everything that job may entail in the present as well as the future. As your company grows, so, too, do your IT needs. Should you hire the IT team now that will support your company through your foreseeable growth stages, or should you hire only what you need now and expect to add additional experience and manpower down the road?
Outsourcing IT can better bridge the gap between where you are now and where you want to go. Your outsourced IT package will include all of the experts you need at a fraction of the cost of hiring a similar team full-time in-house. In addition, your outsourced IT team can grow with you, adding services and support as your company grows.
4. Reduce In-House Hires
Employee salaries and associated expenditures are one of the biggest expenses of almost any company. Outsourcing IT has the benefit of ensuring your IT needs are met without having to make excessive in-house hires. This is especially crucial when your company is in the early stages of growth and you can’t quite justify the need for a full-time in-house IT manager. Instead of hiring full-time when you only have part-time needs, outsourcing IT means you don’t have to pay a full-time salary for an in-house IT expert when your company isn’t big enough to justify the cost.
5. Maximize In-House Team
If you have a medium- to large-sized company and have IT experts in-house, outsourcing IT can augment your team’s expertise while freeing up time for your in-house team to focus on the most crucial IT components of your business. For instance, an in-house team can provide far greater benefits by being available for advancing company technology or handling issues that need internal troubleshooting as opposed to spending time with monitoring, backup, software setup, basic support, and other mundane but time-consuming tasks that can be handled by an outsourced IT team.
6. Reduce IT Costs
There are a number of reasons outsourcing IT reduces company costs:
- Pay only for what you need. An outsourced IT package is flexible, meaning its costs can grow or shrink based on your company’s immediate needs, compared to an in-house hire which has significantly less-flexible costs.
- Reduce in-house hires. By reducing (or eliminating) in-house IT hires, you’re reducing not only salary costs but also costs associated with benefits and bonuses.
- Reduced equipment costs. You’ll also benefit from reducing the amount of in-house hardware and technology required to support your IT needs.
7. Increase Security & Compliance
Some of the major components of IT include network security, data recovery and backup, compliance, and more. While an in-house hire may have security knowledge and experience, it may be limited to certain industries or components. In addition, putting your security and compliance in the hands of a single individual or small team comes with increased risk in the case of relationship-oriented complications.
When you choose an outsourced IT company to manage your security and compliance, you get not only the benefit increased experience and expertise related to security measures and compliance for your industry, but you also get the benefit of having an entire company whose business success relies on the quality of their security and compliance services.
Benefits of Outsourcing IT—2019 Guide
For more information about how outsourcing IT can benefit your company, download our It Outsourcing digital guide.