Of course an outsourced IT services provider would suggest that outsourcing your IT support is the right thing to do wouldn’t we? But, just because it’s in our interests to tell you does not mean that it’s any less true. Let’s look at the arguments for outsourcing over in-house support.
This is the single biggest factor driving organisations to make the decision to outsource. An experienced and qualified IT support professional could cost between £30,000 and £50,000+ to employ.
On top of their bottom line salary is:
- the expense of the Employers contribution to National Insurance payment
- training and personal development (in an ever changing field
- staff cover for holidays, sickness and other forms of absence
In addition, recruiting to a post in the first-place (and re-recruiting, if it should become vacant) costs significant amounts of money and resources.
Only larger organisations can experience economies of scale from having large IT teams, that can also cover each other’s absence and supplement each-others knowledge as part of a wider learning.
Companies without a core IT function don’t warrant large specialist IT teams within them. IT support companies fulfil that need. That’s what Outsourced companies are for.
Managerial Headache:
Whether a Director, a COO, Office manager or someone else is responsible for the technology within a company they must eventually answer difficult questions such as:
- Do we have robust systems in place that if the server was stolen or burned in a fire tomorrow we could continue to operate soon afterwards?
- What would happen if one or more of our IT support staff quit or left abruptly due to ill-health? Can we be sure that we have the required knowledge to continue to function?
- How can we know how much IT investment and proactive work should be undertaken to prevent serious problems for the organisation in the future? Particularly as in-house staff are discincentivised to actively upgrade or renew the corporate infrastructure.
- How can we retain a competitive edge over our rivals using modern hardware and software, if our staff are insulated from the outside world and have no experience other than working on our own systems?
- The in-house team that might be asked to answer these questions has a vested self-interest in the answers. It can often be difficult to challenge the accepted wisdom within your own organisation.
- So how do you safely out-source such an important function?
- All organisational change carries risk which needs to be managed. Care and discretion are key to a successful transition. You might wish to:
- Invite an IT support company to discretely assess how suitable your IT support function is for outsourcing.
- Fully cost the staffing costs and associated on-costs (such as NI tax, office accommodation, training and recruitment) over the past few years for the purposes of comparing IT support quotations and tender responses.
- Identify key individuals that hold specialist knowledge and skills valuable to your organisation. Identify the replacement or retention of these skills and this knowledge as a key requirement of any outsourcing proposal. Identify strategies for addressing this:
- Raise the possibility of retaining the one staff member alone as a specialist, or
- Investigate the possibility of key staff members joining the new support company to continue to support you (and to personally develop in a more IT relevant environment)
- Develop a plan of knowledge handover and documentation, preferably well in advance of any change taking place.
Not all organisations would necessarily gain from completely outsourcing their IT support, but the overall benefit certainly would suggest that it’s worthwhile looking at whether you can.
