Why outsourcing IT is the best option for most organisations

We speak to a lot of people who aren’t sure whether it’s better to manage their IT in house or instead to outsource it to a provider such as Allware. It won’t surprise you to learn that we’re big advocates of outsourcing here at Allware (indeed we have blogged on this topic before, particularly about why outsourcing was the most sensible choice during the pandemic). In this blog we’ll talk more generally about why outsourcing is the way to go for most organisations.

The pace of change in IT is dizzying

The IT world is one of continuous flux. Things are constantly changing. New technologies are developed, old ones are deprecated. This means it is virtually impossible for even the most skillful and motivated IT Director or CTO to be across everything. CTOs often find that they have to hold their hands up and admit defeat when trying to determine the best course for their organisation to take.

This is where outsourcing can really help you. A professional IT company makes it their business to spend a lot of time researching the latest way to share files, to secure systems, to provision email, to pick an app provider, to choose the best AntiVirus product, to negotiate the huge numbers of suppliers vying for your attention and assess who fits where. Time that an in house team simply doesn’t have. That means you’re much more likely to get a genuine ‘whole of market’ assessment of the options from an outsourced provider than from your in house team, who will be much more limited in terms of what they are familiar with and what they can effectively support.

There is no ‘one size fits all’ solution in IT

With the best will in the world, your internal IT team is always going to be limited by the skills that are available within that team. Understandably, people will be more inclined to opt for solutions with which they are already familiar and are confident that they can support. But are those solutions really the best option for your business?

The simple fact is there is no ‘one size fits all” solution in IT, and no realistic way that your internal team will always be able to know precisely what the best option is for you, and this of course is where IT suppliers come in. An outsourced IT supplier will have a much wider range of skills and experience than your internal team. It’s their business to be all over all the options in the market, not just those with which they happen to already be familiar. This means you’re much more likely to end up with the best suite of products and services for your specific needs if you go with an outsourced provider than if you manage your IT in house.

Outsourcing your IT is likely to be much cheaper than managing it in house

Most of the IT budget in SMEs goes on salaries for IT departments that are hard pressed to keep up with the demands of a forward thinking CTO that wants to ensure the company is protected with the best security, whilst at the same time balancing a budget that has not been set in time for this year’s new technology offering because the IT department haven’t had time to research what’s new.

IT departments are invaluable in larger companies as they can react quickly on site and if they only do the job they are employed for, they can do that job well. Of course as we all know this rarely happens because engineers are rolling out some project or other, pricing up new solutions, chasing suppliers, firefighting the latest office scandal and fixing that server that’s 8 years old because it turns out it’s running a business critical accounts system that everyone forgot about. How do you address these types of challenges? Employ someone else, or look at whether you can offload some of these problems to an external supplier?

Let’s say a typical engineer costs the business £35K, plus employers’ contributions of perhaps 20%, holiday pay and so on – they’re an expensive resource, but still just one person so imagine those costs times 5 or 10 for a typical IT team in a midsized organisation.

Now let’s look at outsourcing some of that 5 person IT department to an IT company. Now your £35k will get you not just one person but a team of engineers, and not only that but engineers who already understand the technologies involved and are well used to supporting users, project managing new solutions, and looking at your systems to ensure there’s no 8 year old servers ready to bring down accounts as soon as someone sneezes in the next room.

There’s still a place for in house IT teams

We work hand in hand with many in house IT departments and see it as a brilliant synergy for efficiently providing support to a business. What’s important of course is a good relationship with everyone involved. That point of contact in the business can make the difference between fixing a job in 5 minutes, and fixing the job in the time it takes to drive to site. A hybrid support solution if you like.

I hope you can see how outsourcing is a very attractive option and is a vastly more efficient way of getting IT support for any business. The trick is finding the right provider.

Talk to us today about how we can help you

Speak to us today to find out how we can help you deliver your IT projects on time, broaden the scope of IT solutions in the company and free your time to think about new ways to grow your business.