Small Business Brief

Technology & Software

Outsourced IT Solutions: What You Need to Know Before Hiring IT Services


According to one study, the average U.S. worker wastes around 22 minutes each day on IT issues.

If your business is losing a lot of time to IT problems, you might be looking for a way to improve things. If that’s the case, one option you might want to consider is hiring outsourced IT support.

Below we’ll take an in-depth look at the benefits of outsourced IT solutions and why you might want to invest in this concept. If you’re unhappy with your current IT setup, the ideas in this post might help you put an end to your IT woes.

Let’s begin!

What Is Outsourced IT?

As the name suggests, outsourced IT means you outsource the IT side of your business. In doing so, you’ll no longer need to hire in-house IT staff, as you can just call the outsourced team whenever you’re having problems.

That said, each business is different, and some businesses might be okay with outsourced support, but some might need in-house staff.

Following this, in the next couple of sections, we’re going to look at how outsourced IT fairs in comparison to an in-house team.

The Upside of Hiring an Outsourced IT Team

Hiring an outsourced IT team comes with many benefits, especially if you run a small business.

One of the best things about hiring an outsourced IT team is it can be a lot cheaper than hiring full-time IT staff.

That’s because, with an outsourced IT team, you just pay a relatively small monthly fee. If you compare this monthly fee to the monthly costs of having an IT support person, this fee is quite cheap.

In exchange for this fee, you get a certain amount of IT support for the month, and this allowance is often more than enough.

Of course, as your company grows, you might need to invest in a ‘higher tier’ of support, but even this can be cheaper than hiring multiple IT staff members.

Aside from this, hiring an outsourced IT support team also provides you with instant access to experts.

If you have an in-house team, it will be your responsibility to make sure they are appropriately trained.

If you don’t invest in appropriate training materials, your IT team might not be able to support your business. This will then result in an excessive number of IT problems, any of which might bring your business to a grinding halt.

However, with an outsourced IT team, the IT company will focus on training their staff. As a result, you won’t have to spend money on training materials, and you will also have access to experts whenever you need them.

The Upside of Hiring in-House Staff

Hiring an outsourced IT team definitely comes with some benefits, and this is hard to deny. Yet, there are also situations wherein it might be a good idea to hire an in-house team.

For instance, if you have a particularly complicated company, it might be a good idea to hire in-house IT staff.

One reason for this is that complicated companies tend to have complicated IT setups. Due to this, you’ll likely need to hire someone with a strong understanding of your systems.

An individual like this will understand how the different systems within your company work. This knowledge will then make it easy for them to troubleshoot issues. This can be especially helpful if you need to fix an urgent issue within your IT system.

If you hire an outsourced IT team, there’s a good chance they won’t have a thorough understanding of your setup.

After all, they won’t be working on it day in and day out, as they’ll probably just be called in whenever something goes wrong.

Thus, because they don’t have an intimate understanding of your systems, they might not be able to fix issues as fast as an in-house team member.

Now, it’s important to note this isn’t always the case, and it often depends on the kind of IT company you hire. Either way, it’s something you should keep in mind when investing in the IT side of your business.

Finding a Suitable Outsourcing Company

All things considered, hiring an outsourcing company is generally the best option for most businesses. If you feel the same way, you might be interested in speaking to some IT outsourcing companies. 

While you’re looking for an outsourcing company, it’s a good idea to find a company that specializes in your particular industry.

That’s because specialist companies will have a better understanding of the IT systems used within your business. This knowledge will then come in handy if they’re trying to troubleshoot a specialist piece of software used within your industry.

If you want to find a specialist IT support company, Google can help you get the job done. So, if you’re in the construction industry, you might search in something like ‘managed IT services construction.’

After you do this, you will be able to see a range of IT support companies that cater to the construction industry. If you want to verify the experience of these companies, you may want to look for relevant case studies on their website.

If they don’t have any case studies on your website, you might want to call them and ask for a few references. 

Will You Use Outsourced IT Solutions?

If you spend money on outsourced IT solutions, you should be able to minimize the number of IT problems that affect your business.

Finding a good IT support company can be difficult, and you might need to go through many firms before you find one that is suitable for your business.

This can take a while, and there’s a good chance you will find this process frustrating. Yet, this hardship is worth dealing with when you think about the benefits of minimizing IT problems within your company. 

Want to read something else? If you have some spare time, please go to our blog to see some of the other content on our site!



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