As a small business owner in Melbourne, you may have considered outsourcing some of your business activities. Many businesses have started to question whether they actually need a full time IT staff or they should instead look to Managed IT Support Services to fill the gap.

In this article, we will outline some of the costs and benefits of outsourcing your IT Department.

What does it mean to outsource your IT Department?

When you outsource your IT Department you are essentially asking a professional IT service provider to take the role of what would be usually expected of your IT staff. Any organisation worth this salt would be able to help your business with maintaining both software and hardware within your business whilst also implementing new technologies that will help your business run more efficiently.

We have listed some of these new technologies below:

• Hosted VOiP Phone System
• Cloud Backup
• Upgrading to office 365

Quality Control / Loss of control

When you outsource any aspect of your business there is always a concern of losing control. As it’s not your area of expertise you may not completely understand how a particular process works and usually will be forced to trust in their experience. This is why you need to be careful when entering into an agreement always doing your own due diligence.

Availability 

If you are a business that needs round the clock support for your IT operations it’s probably a far better idea to employ full time staff. However, very few small businesses will need this level of IT support. You need to evaluate how much help you need now and what you are likely to receive in the future.

Benefits

Cost Effective 

Hiring IT Support staff can be an expensive proposition. A full time wage for and IT employee can be upwards of $50,000 per year according to Payscale. This also doesn’t include benefits and paid leave for those you employ.

In contrast, IT Support services can result in a fraction of the cost with monthly packages for managed IT support or on demand services where you control the amount IT support you need.

Knowledge and experience

Like any other industry, full time IT employees who work within an organisation tend to be isolated for the industry as it changes. On the other hand, professionals who work for a service provider are exposed to many different problems and are therefore more capable when confronted with a challenge.

Up-to-date with new Technology

Similar to the point above, the competitiveness of the IT support industry forces companies to continually update their services and capabilities with emerging technologies.

Focus on your business

Finally, there is no need to employ expertise in every area. Having an IT support framework will also free you up to focus on your core business.

Conclusion

As you can see outsourcing to IT support companies can provide various benefits to your business. However it important to be measured before taking the plunge. It’s important to make sure you have the right company for the job.

If your business is interested in outsourcing your IT department feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to discuss how we approach IT support so we can help your business run more efficiently.

Feel free to give us call us on 1300 78 99 66

Or contact us here.