When it comes to managing your technology, all businesses have to make the decision to hire their own team to handle it or outsource it to a company providing IT services. In order to decide, most of them evaluate the level of service and convenience of having IT in-house versus the cost. … and cost, of course, is always a main concern. According to a Deloitte study, 64% of companies consider cost-savings as the biggest factor driving them to outsource. For many businesses, outsourcing can deliver considerable savings. Here are a few reasons why.
1. Efficiency
If you’re hiring in-house, you’ll most-likely have only a few IT employees … or, let’s face it, maybe just one. There’s no way one person can know everything (no, IT unicorns do not exist)! When an IT person runs across an issue they’re not familiar with (and they will), they have to research the problem costing time and money. Your IT services provider will have a much larger staff of technical experts, and when one doesn’t know something, they can easily bring a coworker in on the project. The hours you’re paying for will be spent on productivity, not research.
2. Ability to Easily Scale
When outsourcing IT, you can change your level of service at any time; not so much when you’re fully employing people. Let’s say you run an “internet cafe” (ok, online poker hall) in a small beach town. You can increase the hours you’ll need when in peak tourist season, and then decrease them when business is slow. Or, if you’re a start-up, and all of a sudden, your business takes off, you won’t have to scramble to hire more IT people just to stay in business. You can let your service provider know you’ll be needing more support from now on. This way, you’ll never pay for a service you’re not using.
3. No Hiring Costs
The process of hiring an employee is expensive–anywhere from $4,000 to $7,600. You may hire a recruiter, spend hours interviewing people, pay an HR company to onboard them, and spend money on training them as well. Then, what if someone doesn’t work out, and they leave after a few months? You’re stuck putting in the time and money it takes to hire someone … again. When outsourcing, you save on all of these costs, plus you don’t have to worry about paying bonuses and benefits.
4. The Possibility of Remote Service
Many service providers like Inteleca give the option of 24/7 remote IT support. If something stops working in the middle of the night or you run a business in multiple time zones, it can be expensive to wake up your IT guy and call him down to the office to fix a problem. You might have to pay him overtime for every call, and there’s no sense in making him come to the office if he can walk you through fixing the problem over the phone. Providers who offer 24/7 remote IT support can help by phone, and they won’t charge you for every call. The cost is included in your service package.
5. Better Security
A company-wide security breach might be the most expensive IT issue of them all! The average cost of a data breach is $3.86 million. Since IT service providers are experts in their field, they stay current on the latest methods hackers are using to breach security and the latest methods of securing your data to prevent breaches. Working with a service provider reduces risk for your business by reducing the chances of security breaches significantly. By handling your IT security, the service provider is also assuming some liability in the event of a breach so it’s not all on you.
Inteleca is able to provide IT services across North America, and in parts of Europe, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand. Contact us to talk to an Engineer about a possible service plan.