In–house IT Support or use an outsourcing company?

The conversation about in-house vs. outsourced IT Support is an old subject. Opinion is usually split and if you had a conference room full of office managers or directors that were asked what they would use, it would be very unlikely that they would all agree on their preferred service.

Let’s take a look at the argument in more detail. More people in the SME sector would argue that computer support is a necessity for their business because at least one division of their company needs IT in some way or another. Whether it is for electronic communication or accounting or whatever reason, it seems that everyone needs a computer in the office which means that they also require IT Support

For the majority of businesses in major capitals, almost every office is full of pc’s that are being used on a daily basis. You can walk into a architects or graphics designer’s office and they will have a room full of people using macs to create their work. You could walk into an accountants and there is an office full of people auditing accounts through a windows machine with a bespoke software application. I could go on and give another 100 examples but I guess you get the idea, we are reliant on computers and we require someone to look after them all.

Lets take a look at in-house Network support. In the current financial situation, having an in-house IT Engineer is considered to be something of a touch that only medium to large organisations can afford. Practically unless you are an organisation with an in-house staff base of 20+ then you cannot justify the cost of having a permanent full time IT engineer at your disposal. If you have 20+ and you are Totally reliant on your IT Network then having an in-house techie should be considered, even if it is a junior IT engineer that handles the ‘day to day’ fixes like application issues, dead screens etc. etc.

Outsourcing IT Support companies offer a cheaper solution to an in-house IT guy without having to sacrifice the level of support on offer. That all sounds fine in theory, but does it actually work like that?

There are lots of answers to these questions but the level of Computer support you receive depends on the Network support company you choose. Choose a good one and you will end up having a long lasting relationship with them, choose a bad one and you will end up tearing your hair out. From a response perspective, an IT Outsourcing Company will never truly be able to replace an internal IT engineer, quite simply because unless they have a serious amount of resources, they will always have to give you a service level agreement. This is where you need to do your research when it comes to the small print, if they are going to make you wait 7 hours for a password reset then don’t even bother with them. The same thing applies to business critical response times; if your server dies and they cannot get anyone out within the hour then again they are no use to you whatsoever.

One good thing about an IT Outsourcing company is their area of expertise at their disposal. If you need someone internal that knows everything then you will have to pay through the nose for them, if you don’t have the money but need some serious IT knowledge available then outsourcing with a reputable company is the solution, as most companies have different levels of in-house IT knowledge (Technical managers, senior engineers, remote engineer etc.).