Having a robust IT infrastructure is a must for any business, and maintaining said infrastructure requires companies to either employ their own IT support staff or partner with a third-party IT provider. Typically, small businesses elect to keep their IT in-house, ascribing to the notion that this will be cheaper, yield quicker response times and ensure the technician truly understands their business model inside out. However, embracing an “outsourced” IT model is actually a better way to go.
First things first: At MyITpros, we don’t use the word “outsource.” The way we see it, you aren’t moving your IT operations out – rather, we’re coming in as an extension of your business, and realizing a host of benefits for the whole company in the process. With that said, here are three reasons to bring in a third-party IT company.
Reason No. 1: Reliability
Most small to medium-sized businesses can only staff one IT employee (two at most), which means the entirety of your network and user needs are centered on one person. What happens if that individual gets sick, takes a vacation, goes on leave or finds a new position elsewhere? If you bring in a managed services provider (MSP), you’re hiring a whole team to take care of your network and users. When someone goes on vacation or is out sick, someone else is available for support (or, in MyITpros’ case, three or four other people). Turnover becomes a non-issue, and you tap into a much larger bandwidth for simultaneously working on problems and projects.
Reason No. 2: Wider breadth of knowledge
When hiring an in-house IT staffer, you constrain yourself to the knowledge, experience and certifications of that person. In contrast, working with an MSP gives you access to a whole team of service individuals. Even if you were to hire an extremely skilled in-house technician, the potential salary for someone so experienced runs much higher than a monthly MSP cost (more on this next), and it’s unlikely that any one person’s breadth of knowledge could compete with the expertise of an entire team. At MyITpros, we purposely employ individuals with a wide range of certifications and skills so we can tackle anything from network security to email migration.
Reason No. 3: Cost-effectiveness
In-house costs versus MSP-related expenditures are a big talking point, and we break down how much more cost-effective an MSP is here. Hiring in-house IT staff in Austin, Texas, can run anywhere from $66,000 per year for a systems administrator to over $100,000 for a senior systems administrator – not including benefits and overhead. At MyITpros, all our service teams are staffed with at least one systems admin and senior systems admin, as well as help desk and systems admin II personnel.
Salary aside, IT staff have a lot to do beside user support, including the planning, coordination and communication associated with major projects, vendor liaison duties and, most importantly, new hardware and software procurement. All of this must be managed on top of the regular day-to-day work of an IT tech, which is a major reason why a managed services plan can save you thousands in hourly resource costs.
At MyITpros, we strive to ensure the benefits of a third-party relationship are clearly communicated, but in the end, the decision to “outsource” to an MSP or hire in-house is up to each individual business. Just remember: We’re here to add to your company, not take anything away from it!
