9 Reasons to Outsource your IT

9 Key Reasons to Consider Outsourcing Your IT Support

The decision to outsource your IT support or keep it in-house is difficult for any business.

Our experience in providing first class IT support services has enabled us to compile a list of 9 key reasons to help you consider if this is the right choice for you.

 

1. Reduce Your Costs

The average annual salary of an in-house IT Manager is approximately $120,000 per annum. Added to this are costs for recruitment, additional company benefits and on-going training to keep their skills up to date.

For most businesses, an in-house IT specialist is a luxury that they simply cannot afford. However, they are still left with a large potential cost to their business in periods of downtime resulting in loss of productivity and staff spending their valuable time trying to solve problems they do not completely understand.

Using empower ICT as your outsourced IT consultancy your costs are reduced and consolidated into a fixed monthly payment allowing you to easily budget.

 

2. Lack of In-House Expertise

Your businesses IT needs may peak and trough, so there isn’t enough work for a dedicated person. You may be a small company and simply don’t have enough space for another staff member.

Although you are heavily dependent on your IT systems to run your business, you can’t justify a full-time, in-house employee. Therefore, there are no experts on hand if you have a critical failure and you will need to resort to costly emergency support should this occur.

Using outsourced IT support you can call a dedicated Help Desk and speak to an IT technician as often as you like.  A team of experts are always on hand to help fix any problem you may encounter.

 

3. Complement Your In-House Expertise

You may have a dedicated IT person in-house or a designated employee looking after your IT in addition to their normal job.

You rely heavily on them for the continuity of your IT systems and running of your business. What happens if there is critical failure and they are on holiday, off sick or at an external event or meeting?

What if they are already dealing with a crisis and another one arises at the same time?  Or if there is a serious issue and they try everything they can think of, but it is beyond their capabilities?

Using outsourced IT Support you always have a team of experts on call that are never off sick or take any holidays.  They can come up with solutions to complement and support your own internal IT staff.

 

4. Recruiting Your Own IT Staff

Perhaps you’re thinking about employing your own internal IT person. If you are not from a technical background how do you ensure that you recruit people with the right skill set for your business.

Recruitment is a tough, time-consuming and expensive process at the best of times. It is easy to be confused and bamboozled with technical jargon if you are not IT savvy which could turn out to be a costly mistake for your business if you employ the wrong person.

Using outsourced IT Support you don’t have to worry. You will always have on call a team of highly trained IT specialists equipped with the latest industry qualifications, most up-to-date technical knowledge and skill set available.

 

5. Focus on Running Your Business

Your time is precious and should be spent concentrating on your core business activities like your staff, costs and most importantly meeting the needs of your customers. The last thing you need is to waste time worrying and sorting out IT issues.

Using outsourced IT Support will give you complete peace of mind, take the stress out of managing your technology needs and allow you to focus on running your business.

 

6. Increase Staff Productivity

You may think that you are saving money by keeping the responsibility for your technology in-house and distributing it internally. The likelihood is your employees are not focusing on their primary roles and are being constantly distracted trying to deal with niggling IT issues which is dramatically reducing their productivity.

Using outsourced IT Support your employees can call a dedicated Help Desk where a technician will quickly diagnose and fix their problem.  This will speed up problem resolution, reduce your downtime and allow staff to be more productive by focusing on their core roles.

 

7. Utilising the Latest Technology

The IT landscape is a constantly changing environment and technology is transforming at a rapid rate.  How do you find out if there is a new product, software upgrade or application that may be able to benefit your current operations?

An outsourced IT Support provider is at the forefront of technology provision and will have a range of partnerships and accreditations with industry leading technology providers such as Microsoft, Sage, Cisco and Avast. They will gain advanced intelligence and training regarding the latest technological developments and solutions that will be able to help improve your business.

 

8. Access to Additional Services and Solutions

Are you worried about your business continuity? Need a disaster recovery plan? Want to support an increasingly mobile workforce? Need to reduce your print and telecommunication costs? Need an Information Security Policy or new telephone system?

Your outsourced IT Support provider will have extensive knowledge and experience in a wide cross-section of IT specialisms and will already understand the needs of your business. They will be able to provide you with a range of additionally services and specialist advice.

 

9. Issue Avoidance

It is more than likely that your current IT strategy is based on a ‘break/fix’ scenario. This means that by the time you know there is a problem, your business and staff’s productivity has already been affected and you typically experience prolonged periods of costly downtime.

Using outsourced IT Support your provider can focus on issue avoidance by proactively monitoring your systems 24/7/365. Problems can be identified and rectified before they affect your business, virtually eliminating any downtime and making sure that your IT services are always available when you need them.