Many people get a bad feeling when it comes to outsourcing, as the word can evoke images of big corporations cutting local jobs in favor of hiring low-wage offshore workers.
Outsourcing isn’t inherently good or bad, though, and it comes with it’s own set of benefits and challenges. At face value, outsourcing just means “not using in-house employees” in order to satisfy one or more needs of the business.
In this blog post, we’re going to talk about a type of outsourcing that works particularly well for many small and medium-sized businesses: outsourced IT, commonly known in our industry as managed IT services.
Let’s review the major pros and cons involved with hiring a Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) over an internal employee:
Pros
First, the good stuff! Lets examine the benefits a small businesses can expect to reap when they hire an external company to manage their Information Technology.
(Note: many of the benefits and costs discussed below would easily apply to other types outsourced services as well, not just to managed IT services and outsourced IT services.)
Expertise and skills gap coverage
Many small businesses and startups manage to get by on “bootstrapped IT” – at least for awhile.
However, the longer a business tries to save a buck by using inexpensive hardware, software, and unskilled labor (i.e. paying somebody’s cousin $50/hr to engineer and support a business network), the more likely it is that hidden costs will creep in over time.
If not addressed, an IT skills gap at a company will inevitably lead to accumulated technical debt, system failures, and down-time. Fortunately, outsourcing to a Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) is a great way to fill that gap with an external team of IT professionals – and is much easier than hiring internally.
Easier than hiring internally
Companies deciding to try the non-outsourcing route often face an uphill battle due to the general difficulty of hiring for a highly technical position, such as an IT Manager or Director of IT job.
Ask yourself: how do you (as the employer) know if your new IT worker possessed ALL of the skills needed to manage your IT systems? How would you hold them accountable if you don’t fully understand the work they are supposed to be doing? (This is why many larger companies pay for technical recruitment or “headhunter” services, to help with this difficult phase of the hiring process.)
With an outsourced MSP, your business doesn’t have to worry about making a major hiring mistake. A typical MSP contract includes access to a whole team of experts that have all your major IT needs covered – quality IT service at a fraction of the cost of hiring in house (more on cost later).
Faster, more productive business technology, efficiency gains, risk reduction, better up-time
Smart business owners look to Information Technology as a way to make their organization run faster and more productively – but the details of how to do this are complex, and vary from business to business. One of the major benefits of contracting with an external IT company is that a business can get ongoing expert advice on the best way to manage their IT for max return on investment.
Through regular upgrades and proper network maintenance, a good MSP will proactively make sure that your business hardware and software systems are up-to-date and run with as close to 100% up-time as possible.
This is a win-win: when a customer’s IT environment is stable, an MSP can focus its resources on high-value projects aimed at improving efficiency at the customer’s business – not fighting fires and scrambling to fix old servers that frequently break down.
Cost savings over hiring internally
It’s no secret that hiring an employee is expensive for a business, especially when all costs like recruiting, training, insurance, taxes, and benefits are added up.
This is especially true when hiring for an IT position. A quick check on job site Indeed.com shows that hiring an IT manager in Los Angeles can cost anywhere from $75,0000 to $150,000 per year – and that’s just salary alone!
MSPs typically offer cost savings of 50% (or more) when compared hiring internally – a significant benefit for small businesses lacking the internal resources needed to properly vet, hire, train, and pay an internal IT employee.
Local “boots on the ground”
“My network and server are DOWN – how fast can you get here?”
This is a question no business ever wants to ask it’s IT provider, but the reality is that hardware and software isn’t perfect: eventually a failure will happen, and remote resolution won’t be an option (for example when the entire network is down).
When an emergency situation like this happens, make sure that your MSP has “boots on the ground” and can do on-site remediation at your location quickly when needed (Los Angeles traffic permitting, of course!)
Cons
Look, we’re not going to sugarcoat this for you: outsourced IT is not a good fit for every business, especially for very small or very large businesses. Here are some of the common friction points we’ve seen:
Less control
A common concern with any type of outsourcing, if you are the type of owner who is used to running every part of your business with 100% oversight and control, then you may have serious reservations about handing over the management of a critical business function (such as IT) to a 3rd party outsourced company.
And who could blame you? Hiring an outsourced MSP literally involves handing off the “keys to your castle” and transferring sensitive administrator passwords to someone who isn’t your employee: it’s a scary prospect, and a potentially very risky one if you hire the wrong MSP, and/or don’t set clear expectations at the beginning of the engagement about what the MSP is supposed to be in control of (and what they aren’t in control of).
Lengthy commitments
Most outsourced IT companies in Los Angeles and in other metro areas will require a minimum twelve (12) month commitment for all new client engagements.
This is a common standard in the MSP industry. The reason MSPs require contracts is simple: we know that an outsourced IT contract is effectively a business partnership, and a very intimate one at that, so we must be sure our client understands and agrees to this by requiring that they sign a year-long contract.
If you’re the type of business that is looking for a month-to-month term only, then you are probably not going to realize the long-term benefits of a professionally managed IT environment over the long term.
External communication problems
One of the biggest challenges we face as MSPs has to do with communication.
Example: Help Desk Support Tickets. Despite our efforts to encourage the use of our help desk ticketing system, some clients and their end users just won’t submit a ticket through the proper channel(s) when they have a tech issue.
This makes it difficult for our Help Desk staff to accurately track and resolve tech issues in a timely manner. If the MSP’s ticketing system isn’t used, communication problems often arise – and problems go unsolved.
Communication is a two-way street, however. On the MSP side, some IT companies fall into a pattern of complacency, and fail to communicate proactively with their clients. This can lead to unseen problems that go unsolved for months or even years before they turn into a major catastrophe.
In fact, we’ve talked to many small business clients in Los Angeles who were in this exact situation, after they realized they were being neglected by their previous IT person/company and were looking for a better alternative.
Conclusion
There are a variety of reasons that small-medium businesses need help from third-party IT firms. IT skill and expense tops the list for smaller businesses.
If you’ve never considered an IT managed service offering and are trying to mange your own IT, it’s worth being aware of this cost effective way to have your IT burden lifted.
More Info
Need some more info? Contact us if you are a Los Angeles business and have questions about outsourcing your IT.