IT Outsourcing, or using an outside organization to handle IT responsibilities typically performed in-house is pretty standard in today’s business world. Finding a reliable company to perform those duties is sometimes difficult. Select the wrong IT Provider and you’re in for a world of hurt. Select the right IT Provider and your IT Systems will hum along happily. When meeting with potential IT providers don’t be afraid to ask about their experience, their levels of expertise and be sure to ask for references. A solid provider should be able to answer any questions and would be happy to provide experience and references. If you find otherwise, keep looking.
IT Outsourcing is available in many fashions, fully managed monthly IT means your provider will manage your IT systems to the level of your agreement, this usually includes updates and security patches, backup management, networking, data security and much more. On-demand support is basically a break/fix solution where you contact an IT Services provider when you need them. Regardless of which you choose, you should be able to count on your IT provider at any hour of the day.
Some of the benefits to IT Outsourcing:
Expense cutting: This is often the motivation behind why businesses decide to outsource. IT providers can cut your capital expenses by utilizing resources not normally afforded to smaller businesses. Costs to staff a full IT department have proven excessive to many small and medium sized businesses. High Wages, Benefits, Vacation and Sick Days quickly add up and can weigh heavily on small business. Outsourcing can provide a full range of expertise at a fraction of the cost.
Access to highly skilled staff: Small business would likely employ a junior IT person with limited experience. This might be suitable for some IT issues but what happens when the issue is beyond their knowledge? Now you not only have the expense of the IT staff but you still have to hire an outside source to solve the problem. IT providers often have several support staff, each with different levels of experience and expertise. Depending on the issue at hand, you may deal with a junior person or it may be a senior tech with many years of experience. The point is, the cost is usually fixed. There are IT providers that might charge different rates depending on the severity of the issue but that practice is limited to few companies.
Without required ongoing maintenance to business IT systems, those IT systems will become sluggish, likely start crashing and will eventually fail completely. This can cost your business a tremendous amount of money in system downtime, lost productivity and potential loss of business related data (sales records, purchasing data and more) are all possible. To some businesses the eventual IT failure is catastrophic, many don’t have proper backup strategies and few have a disaster recovery plan.
Keep your business IT systems running at full efficiency by keeping them properly maintained.
