|
Thinking About
Hiring Your Own Internal IT Staff – Think
Again!
Outsourcing your IT brings additional business
value
by Stuart
R. Crawford, V.P., IT Matters, Inc.
Businesses today
wrestle and grapple with the thought of hiring their own
technology support staff to support their daily need for IT
support without fully understanding the risks and the costs
associated with having their own team of technology
professionals.
Business owners, C
level execs and Managers are attracted to the idea of having a
team or a consultant readily available within shouting
distance down the hall, basically having an IT resource
committed to them 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. However, many
of today’s business owners across the country are not aware of
the total risks their business is exposed to by electing to
bring their technology support in-house.
More often than not
it is purely a cost based decision, on the surface it may
appear to be more cost effective to hire a consultant or
employee who is committed as a full time employee. CFOs and
Accounting Managers often look only at the cost of having
their IT outsourced and or attracted to hiring someone for a
few thousand dollars a month as part of their staff will save
their company in the long run. This is not the case in reality
and by having a full time employee will actually end up
costing business today more in the long run.
So what are the
advantages of having an IT Partner who focuses on delivering a
complete managed technology solution? There are a number of
immediate benefits over having a full time employee. These
benefits include:
- The average
technology professional with five years experience may be
worth $60,000 a year. This is great when you looking at the
bills from your IT provider and see that you have probably
spent paid the same in their consulting bills for only a
fraction of the time. When a business elects to go internal,
a $60,000 salary now buys the business one person and not a
team of professionals offering depth in expertise and
knowledge.
- IT Partners will
provide around the clock monitoring and coverage throughout
the entire term of the contract. When a company hires their
own IT staff, now the challenges around vacation scheduling,
training and time off from illness impacts the company. An
outsourced IT Partner provided full time coverage,
vacations, illness and other absences now are not an impact
on your technology support.
- There are hidden
additional costs when a business elects to hire internally.
The costs associated with training can rise rapidly, when
you have a trusted IT partner, training is no longer the
company’s challenge. The IT partner ensures that the skills
of their team are up to date. Combine this with costs
associated with procurement of equipment that include
SmartPhones, laptops and other supplies can quickly add up
and then there is the added payroll expenses associated with
healthcare, payroll and others logistical
items.
- IT partners can
offer a wealth of knowledge and great resources when needed,
offering networks of partners who can help geographical and
even across town. When a company turns to hiring their own
staff, this experience often is not available to them and
they are stuck with just a single person or a very small
team with limited expertise. Now when these skills are
required outside of the skills level of their staff, this is
now an additional expense that normally the right IT partner
can extend to a company as part of their
program.
- IT technicians
always like to be challenged even the ones that you hire.
What happens at the average company when the challenges stop
occurring? Boredom is disastrous. There are two possible
outcomes that occur with in-house staff who deal with
challenges with boredom.
- They choose to
leave to seek out challenges – When a company loses a member
of their own internal staff, the intellectual property and
knowledge goes with them. This leaves a huge void in the
understanding of your systems and network layout. With a
trusted IT partner, this knowledge is retained and companies
continue to function as if nothing occurred.
- They decide to
adopt “make work” projects – When this occurs it can be
disastrous as well. Many make work projects are the result
of boredom and complacency because of lack of challenges.
When make work projects appear, what isn’t getting done is
the attention to the daily needs of your systems and
network. Make works projects are distractions and your IT
partner doesn’t worry about finding stuff to do on your
network. The daily attention to your systems is still the
main focus of their services.
Michael Fafinski,
President of Syand Corporation in Minneapolis states about the
value of having a full service IT partner can bring to a
company, “having a full feature IT partner eliminates the
“tunnel vision” found with internal employees. Too often,
employers are limited only by the expertise of their internal
employees and lose opportunities to improve their business.”
Many firms that
elect to go with their own in-house IT person, more often than
not resent this decision down the road. What seemed like a
great idea quickly turns into a huge business mistake that
ends up costing them.
Randy Biggs from
VACS in St. Catharines, Ontario shares “Hiring a trusted IT
partners allows a company to have access to many additional
certified resources without having to keep paying for their
staff to get certified. I find that with hired staff, you get
one of two types. One that always wants the latest and
greatest that many companies cannot afford to keep up with and
the second, someone who becomes complacent and only does what
needs done. In either case, they aren't looking out for the
best interest of the company.”
When a company
elects to retain an outsourced firm over hiring internal, they
are getting service from a company who is focused on ensuring
the IT needs are being addressed in the most efficient manner
possible. Many trusted IT partners are focused on the bigger
picture, ensuring everything is looked after in a company’s
environment including:
- Vendor
Relations
- IT
Budgeting
- Network
Monitoring and Proactive IT services
- Knowledge Base
Management
- Disaster
Recovery Planning
Partnering with a
trusted IT Partner brings value to any business no matter what
the size, what makes more sense to you? Limiting the
knowledge, options and having to deal with people challenges
such as complacency and boredom or expanding available options
by having a wonderful relationship with a trusted IT partner
who understands what business needs to grow, increase profits
and the importance of the right technology
solution.
Stuart
Crawford is the Vice President of Business Development for IT
Matters Inc. A Calgary based Professional Services firm
focused on delivering Managed IT Services in Southern Alberta.
IT Matters is a Gold Microsoft Partner and Small Business
Specialist. Visit their website at http://www.itmatters.ca/.
You can contact Stuart at scrawford@itmatters.ca
or through his blog at http://blog.itsuccessmentor.com/. |
