Your Source for Outsourcing Part 3: What Does it Cost?
January 22nd, 2018 by admin
At the bottom of every business consideration are the golden questions: what will each option cost, and which one is the best bang for your buck? If you are looking at in-house solutions, trying to cover all your core IT needs would require that you either pay way too much for your staff or – more commonly – you gap a lot of critical roles and services that require specialized teams and tools. For these reasons outsourcing your IT produces the best bang for your buck. We’ll explore the reasons why and crunch the numbers below. Your Source for Outsourcing Part 3:What Does it Cost? Some of the reasons that outsourced IT is more affordable than in-house costs are the following:- Small in-house teams or individuals can be easily overwhelmed when things go wrong. This leads to longer time being needed to solve problems and higher costs of downtime. Specialized IT companies have spent years refining their training, tools, documentation, and processes to efficiently handle day-to-day issues, no matter how large or small.
- If you decide to outsource your IT you are getting multiple TEAMS of technicians for the price of one or two in-house employees (depending on your company size). That means a wider variety of skill sets, more availability (no need to worry about everyone going on vacation at the same time), and no holes in your IT coverage (see Part 2).
- In-house staff don’t have the time to tackle proactive care manually, and they certainly don’t have the half-dozen or so deep skill sets to tackle it the right way. The right way means using a full array of automation and toolsets, and frankly it takes hundreds or even thousands of hours each year to manage. You have to research, buy, set-up, customize, operate, constantly update and even occasionally convert all the proactive care toolsets, workflows, systems, and policies, as well as create documentation specifically for all your servers and other technology.
In-house IT Pros and Cons
Many businesses keep a few IT people on payroll, and having them just down the hall when you need quick help can be very useful. The biggest problem is that in the world of IT, when it rains it pours. Often networks, workstations, and software will work fine most of the time and then need LOTS of work when things go wrong. Finding the balance on an in-house team is very difficult. For instance, if you have enough techs around to handle things easily during the downpour, you are likely paying a small fortune in salaries. If you have too few in-house technicians, then when things go wrong it can be a total catastrophe. It ends up costing even more in downtime, reputation, and frustrated employees (not to mention probably giving your unfortunate tech an ulcer). This is an intrinsic problem in the industry that is leading many businesses to outsource during projects or downpours, save their wallet, and keep their technicians sane.Looking at the Numbers
The average salary for a Network Administrator in Utah is almost $79,000. Including typical benefits and burden (30%) it comes to about $8,500 a month for ONE person. It’s a specialized job and they earn their pay, but that’s not cheap! If you want your IT done right (and to fill all of the roles discussed in Part 2) you’re going to need more than one person (probably 4-5) to get the same level of care that an outsourced team provides. If you are a small business, maybe you can afford to have one or two in-house technicians. If you are a bigger business it might be reasonable to afford a team, but the costs stack up quick. Especially when compared to a flexible asset that you can pay for as you need, like an outsourced team. (For specific recommendations based off of your company size see Part 1.)Save with Proactive Care
It’s true that technology can be finicky and require a lot of attention one month, and hardly any the next, but this is only partly the nature of technology. It’s also because the IT environments of most businesses are less healthy than they could be. Outsourced IT companies have found from experience that it often takes less time to prevent a problem from happening, than it does to stop it after the fact. It also means you don’t have to deal with sudden and unexpected random disruptions. With scheduled maintenance, patching, and backups, the problem solving happens after-hours and behind-the-scenes, months or years before the problem occurs. Being proactive is a specialty that a lot of in-house technicians aren’t able to focus on alone. Outsourcing is a great way to get your infrastructure and software healthier and better protected, which saves you money in the short and long run. Kender OstlundPosted in: Productivity, Teams