Should your business be outsourcing your IT support?

outsourcing your IT support

It’s safe to say that most businesses these days rely on IT to survive. Regardless of whether you operate in the IT industry, you’ll no doubt have people in departments like admin, sales, and marketing that work through their laptops and phones daily – and where there’s IT, there’s a need for business IT support.

There’s a fork in the road when it comes to hiring IT support for your business: do you employ your own dedicated team, or do you outsource your needs to an MSP?

Your first response might be to choose the former – surely a team that you pick out and who you can keep an eye on will be better for your company right? But if you aren’t too up on your IT knowledge, then you might not know what’s best when it comes to IT support, and who will be the best at providing it.

That’s why we’re here to let you know the benefits and drawbacks of each option, so that you can make the decision that will be best for your company.

You need to understand that you will be requiring the services of IT experts especially when you are planning to relocate your business to a new setup. For example, by working with experts that offer IT relocation in Malaysia, you do not need to worry about the integrity of your systems, servers and other digital products when you are shifting to a new office space. Everyone is worried about what will happen to their data. But if you are working with experts, you can rest assured that your operations will not be affected at any cost.

Managed Service Providers

It’s pretty straightforward to visualise what an in-house IT team would look like, but thinking about how outsourcing could work isn’t quite so simple – especially if you don’t fully understand what a managed service provider can do for you.

You can think of an MSP as just an IT team that is housed in a different office. They usually provide helpdesk style support for users, in addition to help with network infrastructure design and installation. If you wanted to implement MPLS into your business network, for instance, then an MSP would be able to advise you, help with the installation, and provide maintenance.

The Cost of Hiring an MSP

Although you can rest assured that an MSP will almost definitely cost much less than hiring an in-house team, it’s hard to be any more specific than that. There are a huge range of factors that will make your business unique, from your industry to your age and size, and the cost of an MSP can be highly dependent on factors like the users you have, the data you handle and who has access to it, and more.

Therefore, you probably aren’t going to find a package deal that completely covers all of your needs – you’ll have to have a thorough discussion with your MSP where you decide on exactly what they’ll provide for you. You can then outline this together in an SLA – service level agreement – that legally states what services the MSP will provide, and how much you’ll be paying.

As such, you need to ensure that your SLA is based on a detailed understanding of your IT needs, from both a technological and business perspective. You should take the MSP’s viewpoint into account during these talks too, especially if you aren’t overly familiar with recent IT developments – chances are, they’ll have experience in growing the IT systems of businesses similar to your own.

The Benefits of Working With an MSP

You still probably aren’t 100% sure on whether an MSP is right for your business, and we don’t expect you to know by the end of this article either! You’ll need to sit down with senior members of your team and figure it out by going over benefits and downsides. Here are a few advantages of hiring IT Managed Service Providers in Singapore to get you started:

No Recruitment Costs

Once you’ve brought in factors like lost management time, interviewing, recruitment consultancy costs, and more, it’s estimated that your business will have lost thousands in the recruitment of just a couple new employees. Because getting started with an MSP only requires a couple of short discussions, you’ll definitely see some savings in the long run when compared to hiring a dedicated team all by yourself.

No Need To Train

Once you’ve hired your own dedicated team, you’ll have to start thinking about training costs, and this goes beyond the initial in-house training they’ll require. From on-going accreditation costs to certifications for the latest tech, these bills will keep on coming. On the other hand, working with an MSP means that these costs are covered, without you having to shell out.

Straightforward Monthly Costs

You’re never really going to be sure each month how much an in-house IT team will cost you. Of course, you’ll have a regular wage bill, but between skill gaps that need a consultancy to plug and sickness or maternity leave costs, you won’t quite know where you stand. Your costs are much more fixed with an MSP, if you don’t require anything beyond what your SLA outlines.

Cutting Edge Insider Knowledge

As your MSP is always working with a range of other clients alongside you, across a broad variety of industries, they’ll have up to date knowledge on what’s possible in the world of networking tech. They can then pass this knowledge onto you in the form of cutting edge advice and access to best practice approaches, perfect for when you’re thinking of growing your infrastructure.

The Benefits Of Keeping Support In-House

However, none of this is to say that there aren’t clear benefits when it comes to keeping your IT Support London, and many successful businesses swear by it.

For instance, if you have a well established working culture that you don’t want to disrupt with the presence of another business, bringing your own team in would make more sense. You may also not have much of a choice if your industry requires a certain degree of data protection that an MSP can’t offer.

Lastly, an in-house team may just have a better understanding of your company, knowing not just your IT needs, but how they work in conjunction with other business requirements.

Choosing The Right Support For Your Business

We can’t make this decision for you, and it’ll likely take much more research and discussions before you can come to a solid conclusion. But regardless of what direction you choose to go, make sure that you don’t have any gaps in your security – downtime can bring a business to its knees, and data breaches could prove disastrous depending on your industry.

Related: Computer Repair Regina

Bio:

“Hi, I am Mohd Zaid Mansoori, a teenage Content Marketer, Designer, Digital Marketer, and Tech Enthusiast from Uttar Pradesh, India. I am a student who is also a freelancer and is working on some Awesome Websites like InnovationFunda.”