Outsourcing IT is a great solution if your in-house team is too busy to respond to all requests. It’s also a fantastic choice if you don’t have an IT team at all. Starting a help desk, or hiring more people can cost a lot of money and company time.

Read this article to learn the benefits of outsourcing your business IT needs.

The Benefits of Outsourcing IT

There are many benefits of outsourcing IT needs, especially for those running small to medium size businesses. Having the outside IT expertise helps businesses focus on other important tasks and stay productive.

Let’s take a look at the benefits you receive by hiring an outside IT company to help with your IT problems.

Cost

One of the biggest benefits of outsourcing IT is it dramatically reduces cost. If you were to hire someone in-house, you’d be spending an expense of their annual salary and other company benefits, alongside the time it takes to train a new employee.

Training is expensive and time-consuming.

When you outsource, you’re already getting trained professionals to look at your problems and complete them quickly. Your cost is cut down because you’re not having to pay for incentives, bonuses, benefits, or a salary.

You may pay a monthly fee but it will less than what you’d pay to hire one person on.

Hiring an outside vendor helps companies keep track of their IT finances and ensures you always have someone to turn to. In-house employees may quit or be fired, leaving you behind in the dust.

With outsourced IT, it’s easier to predict and manage the IT costs your business will incur. It helps you to create a budget that you can stick within, while only paying for the service you need and use.

Security

In the age of cyber attacks and the growth of hackers, cybersecurity is of utmost importance for any business. Having a team that is fully trained in all cybersecurity tactics and cyber risk response is necessary for keeping your private and sensitive information secure.

Not only are they trained on all of the appropriate certifications required to be successful in IT, they have a vast well of knowledge that comes from experience.

Having an in-house team that doesn’t have the proper training leads to weak spots in your IT infrastructure, opening a door for hackers to enter in.

IT vendors are familiar with cybersecurity threats from a wide variety of industries and see more on a daily basis, preparing them for any attack that may come against your company.

Disaster Recovery

Like information security, disaster recovery is a great benefit that outside IT vendors offer to businesses. Your building may unexpectedly suffer from a flood, fire, or tornado. If you don’t have the proper disaster recovery strategies set up, large amounts of information will be destroyed.

If you aren’t prepared for disasters and don’t have a plan in place if one happens to you, your company could take a huge hit. If you’re outsourcing IT, your resources will be up and running within no time as they work to house your data backups.

Additional Resources

Having a small business requires all the work power you can get. This means that you can’t afford to waste time trying to solve IT problems when your employees or current team lacks the expertise.

With outsourced IT support, you can hire a full team of professionals to take over when the going gets tough. If you have a project coming up that you know is going to require extra manpower, you can always hire on a project to project basis.

While a contract will be drawn up, it’s less binding than paying out a yearly salary.

Another benefit to having additional resources from outsourcing IT is that the projects you have on deck can be started right away. If you’re relying on your in-house team, they might push it off or take weeks to hire and train additional people for a single project.

Having an IT team on call ensures your project will execute with expertise.

Business Focus

Another benefit is that your business will stop thinking about IT needs. At least, that’s the goal. Managers and employees are busy, and to keep your business focused, they need to stay on task.

Having an outside IT team will allow them to focus on the tasks on their plate and not have to worry about IT problems.

Having an IT team can help level the playing field with the competition in the same space. If your business is looking at web development or application development, you’ll have access to the same people that have designed and created apps for other businesses.

You can utilize their expertise for your benefit, using the same access to technology as other companies, and give you a competitive edge.

Reducing Risk

The last benefit outsourcing IT can do for you is to reduce your overall business risk. From PCI compliance to HIPAA and other government regulations, it’s important you know how to follow them all.

If you have a team that isn’t well versed in all of the financial regulations, the technology market and what’s required by the government, you could be facing lawsuits.

Having a team that has the knowledge reduces your company risk, allowing you to feel secure in all of your business practices.

To Outsource or Not

As you can see, there are many benefits to outsourcing your IT needs. If you’re a small to medium-sized business, you’ll see the greatest benefit. Larger organizations can still see improvements from risk and cybersecurity management to reducing cost and focusing business goals.

If you’re interested in learning more about what outsourced IT companies can do for you, read this article today.