Businesses of all sizes depend more and more on their IT infrastructure. This is increasingly true in the wake of Covid driving a massive surge in e-commerce adoption. Businesses that used to have a basic website or no website now run online stores. Meanwhile, newly minted digital entrepreneurs are relying on software to transmit orders to 3PL services for fulfillment.
Sadly, using information technology and managing it are very different animals, as many business owners discover the hard way. If you’ve ever wondered if you should outsource your IT support, keep reading for six reasons why you should.
1. Cybersecurity
Even small businesses are coming under digital attack. That is to say nothing of the seemingly unending reports of data breaches coming out of large companies that should have their data locked down tight.
The decrease in cybersecurity professionals is making this problem worse. Estimates suggest a global shortfall of around 2.7 million cybersecurity workers. The huge demand paired with the shortage has driven salaries for cybersecurity specialists through the roof and beyond the budgets of many businesses.
The good news is that companies that provide outsourced IT support typically keep a cybersecurity expert on staff. Outsourcing allows you to meet your needs without breaking the bank.
2. Expert Advice
At some point, most businesses will run up against an IT problem that no one on staff has experience managing. For example, say you are considering migrating data from one platform to another. The guy who keeps your network up and running may know everything about subnetting, but he probably won’t know anything about data migration.
Turning to outsourced IT support can let you access experts who will help you develop a data migration approach and strategy. They can help you pin down your migration goals, assess compatibility, and determine what types of migration you may need. That kind of advice can often mean the difference between success and a running battle against failure.
3. Regain Focus
IT management, in particular, requires a level of knowledge and training that it’s very difficult to DIY your way through it. A YouTube video can walk you through setting up a wireless router, but it can’t impart the knowledge you need to optimize your network.
Outsourcing lets you remove most of those time-consuming IT tasks from your to-do list. Yes, you still need to review recommendations from the IT service and discuss options, but you’ll invest way less time in those discussions. That lets you regain focus on your business’s core activities.
4. Cost
Sadly, you can’t just hire one person to deal with your IT needs. IT stretches across everything from hardware to software, networking, and even cloud computing. No one person can know all of it. That makes building and maintaining a fully staffed IT department a very expensive endeavor. When you outsource IT management, you can usually get it for substantially less than you’d pay to hire full-time staff.
5. 24/7 Support
Even if you do have some IT people on staff at your business, those people work business hours. Sure, you can call them in late occasionally, but not too often. Outsourcing gets you access to 24/7 support. If your network goes down at 2 am, you have someone to call who won’t be asleep.
6. Innovation
Most business owners and staff only have time to work on the things they need to get done. You almost certainly don’t have time to keep up with new IT technology trends and innovations. Yet, those very innovations might transform your business. IT support companies will stay on top of those trends, which positions them to make recommendations about new technologies that might benefit your business.
Outsourcing IT Support for Your Business
Outsourcing anything in your business can give a business owner pause because it feels like ceding control of something essential. Yet, outsourcing is often a solution for dealing with time-consuming tasks and problems that aren’t directly related to your core business functions. IT is one of those time-consuming tasks that is best outsourced to professionals with training and experience. You’ll get better advice, which should mean you get a more secure and effective IT infrastructure.
