Outsourcing is a business strategy that contracts out a task to specialized providers. Companies commonly outsource its accounting and bookkeeping duties, customer service, HR management, and technical support.
Good IT support teams are especially hard for companies to build and maintain, which makes it a common function that companies would rather outsource to companies that focus on providing those services specifically.
However, why do companies outsource? Do the benefits outweigh the advantage of having your own team?
Outsourcing provides a lot of benefits, especially to small businesses with limited resources. If you’re thinking of outsourcing your technical support, but you’re still on the edge about it, read the following reasons why doing it is a good business move.
1. Reduces Costs
Reducing labor and equipment costs is one of the major reasons why companies outsource IT services. Employing a company to do the work for you is cheaper than hiring a whole IT staff. The employees’ initial training to get them onboard plus the regular training to ensure their knowledge is up to date add to the cost as well.
Buying all the equipment you need for a functional IT department and maintaining the system also costs a lot of mone. Removing these factors and paying a fixed cost contract will also help you manage your annual operating costs more easily.
2. Increases Productivity
Companies that try to save on costs delegate IT tasks to their existing employees instead. Not only will this produce disastrous results, especially when the employees in question don’t have the necessary knowledge, it will also decrease their productivity in their original roles. Instead of having them focus on their responsibilities in your business, they’ll spend their time resolving IT issues.
Their poor handling of the system might also result in decreased productivity of the whole staff. If a problem occurs that the untrained IT guys don’t know how to handle, it might have a direct impact on the workflow of the team.
3. Provides Support 24/7
If your business is one that needs to be open to customer calls 24 hours a day, that’s one of the reasons to outsource. Instead of getting another IT staff, which will only cost you more, solely for answering calls outside of your normal working hours, outsourcing to a company will guarantee that someone is always available to help your customers.
This will also ensure that a professional will answer the call and provide technical support, not just anyone you deem to have some degree of IT knowledge.
4. Adjusts According to Demand
When the demand suddenly increases and more calls start coming in, what do you do if you have a permanent staff?
Hiring temporary employees poses a lot of issues. You don’t know when the demand decreases, which will force you to terminate them immediately. You’re also not sure of the technical skills and personality if you’re in a rush to get someone onboard.
Meanwhile, an IT company can easily scale up or down depending on your needs because of their access to vast resources.
5. Gives Access to Cutting-Edge Technologies and Industry Experts
Security of your data and your customers’ data is paramount. That’s why Facebook is in a lot of heat nowadays, its platform is vulnerable to third-party entities mishandling the users’ data. Even large companies are susceptible to attacks, with hackers successfully gaining access to JP Morgan’s 76 million households plus 7 million small businesses in 2014.
To keep your data safe and secure, however, you must have the newest technologies and the knowledge of industry experts. You and your staff must be up-to-date with the industry standards, which might be hard to do if you’re a small-time player.
Outsourcing solves this problem. It’s their job to get cutting-edge technologies and train their employees regularly so you don’t have to do it. Getting access to these will also ensure that your systems are working smoothly.
6. Increases Competitiveness
If you have a dedicated IT department, the costs of maintaining, training, research, development, and implementation will cost you big bucks. However, businesses don’t always shoulder those costs. It’s the customers who will likely experience the added costs.
If your operating cost is high, you will likely pass it on to customers by raising your product prices. This makes you lose your competitive edge. A small business with a small technical staff will also move more slowly in development, giving competitors a lead.
7. Ensures 24/7 Maintenance
As part of an outsourced IT support contract, there’s likely a team who monitors your IT network on a 24/7 basis. This allows them to recognize flaws and bugs even before they affect your infrastructure and business.
This reduces the possible downtime and loss of productivity. Your own IT staff will likely work on a break/fix set-up, which means they fix a problem when something breaks. This would have already led to decreased productivity and a possible loss of revenue.
8. Decreases Risks
Every investment carries a certain level of risk, and that includes hiring and maintaining a whole department. Companies providing technical support assumes these risks. With their industry knowledge, they can better assess and take steps.
9. Removes the Recruitment Process
Another one of the reasons for outsourcing is that it completely removes the process of hiring from the equation. Recruitment is time-consuming and challenging, especially for a hiring officer who doesn’t know what skill set should the business be looking for in a potential employee.
The lack of the right knowledge opens up the risks of hiring people without the right technical skills for the role. The HR may not even be able to properly define the role if they don’t know what they need.
10. Allows You to Focus on Your Business
When you no longer have to worry about the security and integrity of your system, it allows you to focus on what you need to do in order to grow your business. Your employees, without network interruptions and possibly the added IT responsibilities, will also be able to perform with their best for the company.
You can focus on improving your products and services while the outsourced IT team deals with the technical issues so you and your staff can keep on working without worry.
Outsource Technical Support Now
If you need these benefits, you might now want to outsource technical support. Contact Us and let’s form a solution based on your business’ current needs. We provide a no-obligation IT assessment so we can cover all your technical demands.
