IT Outsourcing – The Question

Many business owner come to the question of outsourcing their IT department. Often it comes down to the cost difference between in house IT and outsourced IT. Outsourced IT is comparable to about the cost of a value meal at your favorite lunch spot. Take $4.00 a day per employee will cover most if not all of your IT needs. With keeping your IT department in house you will need to consider the salary of your IT employees along with benefits as well as a place to work. That can add up to fairly sizable amount. Should you decide that you want to outsource you get many of the same benefits as an in house IT plus more.

IT Outsourcing – The Benefits

When you decide to go with an IT managed services company, you get the comfort of knowing that the people you are dealing with are trained professionals. Alleviating the time you would spend on the hiring process and screening of new employees. You also get a trained professional who is available when ever trouble may arise. As mentioned above, you also do not need to pay out benefits and salary and any business owner knows that wage and benefits are one of the most expensive parts of day to day operations. An outsourced IT also has their own office at which to operate, saving you space at your location for other aspects of your business.

The Verity of Help

A company that supplies outsourced IT often has a verity of delivery methods for their services. One such method is the common remote help desk approach; this is by far the most convenient system of delivery. Help desk provides almost immediate support on all forms of problems with the exception of physical issues. Workstations and servers alike can be serviced from remote locations. Technicians are also able to share your screen to help troubleshoot any problem you may be having. On-site support is also a common practice allowing technicians to perform equipment checks and minor maintenance and repairs. This also gives you the opportunity to talk to the technician about any problems or concerns that you may have at the time. Everyone wants help when they need it and with an outsourced IT department you don’t need to worry about employee’s availability due to being sick or not scheduled.

Planning is probably one of the most over looked benefit to outsourcing. When you want to add new hardware/software to your existing system, there is a lot of testing and planning that needed to take place. When you have a company taking care of this for you it eliminates the need to micromanage. Having experts that work on projects every day helps the planning process move quicker by removing the need to research.

Outsourced IT in Relation to Company Size

While most people believe that and out sourced IT department is for larger companies that is simply not true. It was found that the majority of outsourced IT belonged to smaller businesses, this is because of needed. Most small businesses have little to no need to have IT staff onsite at all times. Also workspace is a major contributing factor in the decision to outsource, why would you use the space to house an IT department when they don’t need to be on location at all times?

What do small businesses use an outsourced IT department for? The four areas of managed services are application development, application support, infrastructure, and help desk/desk-side support. Smaller companies use management services for areas to which they need a skilled technician but don’t have the funds or space to support high tech labor. Small business infrastructure is just as important as medium and large companies.

What Do You Want Out Of Your Own IT Department?

When you have your own IT department, it allows you to advance your company by restructuring your employees to better fit your work flow. Making you company more efficient by developing a computer system fits your company. Your personal IT department can also be used to connect your employees from home and on the go. Decreasing travel and communication time which in turn makes your employees happier and saves you money. Personalized plan can be created that fit what you need when you need it. Something that is often over looked is the man power needed to setup new locations with the computer equipment and network communication systems. Having a group of people ready to take on the task of planning and documenting location setup is a big time and money saver.

Return On Investment

One thing that business owners know is return on investments. Don’t be mistaken this is an investment. When you invest in a managed IT services your return is the saving you get from not housing your own IT. This is only part of the total figure; think about all aspects of business. Employee turnover, time saved off micromanaging, increased efficiency, less downtime, and much more. When this is all added you depending on your business this is a hefty amount of money.

Harmony’s Managed Services

Harmony business structure is designed for small to medium businesses and is flexible to your unique situations and needs. We offer infrastructure setup as well as support for you growing business. Harmony allows for you to make economic changes to you computer network as you need. Help desk support allows for quick response to problems that may arise in daily activity. It is also a great feature to have if you company has remote workers that are off site and need attention from out of state. Equipped to deal with physical problems, we can handle hard drive failures as well as upgrades. This allows you to use a single source for your computer needs. Harmony offers a drop off repair and an on site pick up of your personal computers giving you more time to manage you business. If you have ever needed a specific program in order to conduct business; harmony offers application development. We support both web application development and support for application already in existence.