Have you or your business recently been weighing the benefits of either hiring an external IT team, versus keeping your own on-site? Perhaps you have a company that is mostly reliant on new technology, and you have been having consistent issues with your online platforms? Maybe you are just getting started in the business world, and are looking to start off in the most efficient and cost-effective way? If any of this sounds familiar, then be sure to read on for some essential pointers.
This article will seek to discuss the pros and cons of either outsourcing your IT department versus having your own IT team. Sometimes when running a business, it seems like the best idea always to have a team on-site, but this might not be the best case depending on the type of IT needs your business has.
Responsibilities
The first indicator that should help you determine whether or not you need an onsite IT team, or it would be better to outsource the work, is to look into the types of responsibilities that your IT team will need to fill. This can range from simple things like setting up a local computer network or be as advanced as maintaining a server and/ or website. If you have only a few occasional IT needs every month or week; then it might be easier to outsource this labour rather than employing someone to do occasional work. If you are a tech-based company which frequently has IT issues or needs, then it might be a better call to keep a full time IT staff on-site at all times.
Project Size
Another consideration that you should look at when deciding whether to outsource your IT department is the type of project you are currently working on. If you have a new app in development, you might want to outsource the labour and hire a small on-site team to provide maintenance work. However, if your app is complicated, hiring a full-time team to maintain and design the same app might be beneficial either financially or logistically.
Professional Contractors
When people refer to outsourcing a particular department of their company, they refer to contracting out specific jobs, rather than hiring employees to do the same task on a full or part-time basis. This is incredibly common in many industries, especially the IT industry. Since IT is such a specialised skill set, many businesses find it most efficient to hire a versatile team to handle all tech needs. IT consultants at Baroan discuss the different benefits of outsourcing your IT team, see the website to get a more thorough understanding. Contracting out your tech team will also ensure that you always have a team who is experienced in all the latest programming languages and development tools.
Salaries
Depending on the size of your business and overall budget, you may or may not provide your employees with salaries. Having an IT team on salary can sometimes be beneficial, but if they are not working a lot, then it is likely smarter to find a way to outsource the labour. Outsourcing will ultimately save you money, and allow you to put your business capital where you need it most.
Benefits
Similarly to salaries, another thing that many businesses provide their employees with can include things like health or dental insurance. While this can be a huge asset for employees, it is also a financial drain on your company. By outsourcing your IT team, you will have one less department to worry about providing health and dental benefits. Many IT firms will provide their employees with these benefits, so you don’t have to.
Efficiency
Another factor about hiring an IT team externally, which can affect your decision-making process is the overall efficiency required to run your It department. Suppose you are a company that absolutely needs to have good IT running things to continue operating. In that case, it is probably a good idea to have a team of experts dedicated solely to keeping things working efficiently. Some IT contractors pride themselves in having teams which specialise in efficient and affordable IT solutions. This can sometimes save you weeks or even months when developing a project or fixing an ongoing issue.
Server Maintenance
Are you a company that operates primarily online, and uses or runs some kind of server to facilitate your business model?? This scenario is becoming increasingly common for many companies, as online accessibility and retail have become more important across several industries. Having a full-time IT department can sometimes be helpful when running servers, but can make it difficult for other types of IT work to get done. By outsourcing certain aspects of your company's IT department, such as server maintenance, you will help the rest of your company run more smoothly in the online sector.
Web Design
Having a good website to either advertise, sell, or promote your services or products is an extremely important part of the modern business world. Hiring an external IT team to help make this happen is a great way to ensure that your website gets built quickly and is of high quality. You can simply outsource the entire content creation and setup process, and only get involved as a supervisor.
After reading this article, the hope is that you have found a few useful pieces of information that will help you decide to have an in house IT team or outsource the work. In some cases, having an on-site IT team can seem like a good idea, but other times you might find that your on-site team is not as efficient or versatile as an outsourced team of experts. Be sure to do lots of research to see which options are available out there for your business before making a decision. Having a team with a unique set of skills required in your industry can either make or break your business. Use these tips and tricks to help you make the decision that will be best for your business.
