5 Benefits to Outsourcing

Outsourcing, as most of you may know, is the business of hiring outside firms to handle work which would typically be done in-house by either you, your staff, or an entire department within your organization. (4 hour work week, anyone?) Now, there is nothing wrong with doing work in-house, but outsourcing has some great advantages which can save you not only a lot of time, but money as well. Because IT tends to be a more complicated department, requiring a lot of time and effort to maintain, here are 5 benefits to outsourcing your IT.

1) Cost Reduction

The first benefit you will see when you decide to outsource your IT is a reduction in your expenses. This can be seen across the board, starting with recruiting costs. No longer will you have to worry about staffing your department, finding a new hire for that project, or filling a position due to an unexpected resignation. Additionally, you'll see savings in other areas of your business too. Because you no longer have to pay the high salary of so many employees, and instead have one payment to make to the company, you can free up more money to invest back into your business.

2) Productivity Increase

Having internal teams devoted to one specific task (in this case, the IT department) can take up a lot of time and money. You are paying these people full time to come to work every day and work on X. Instead, when you outsource your IT work, you have now created more time for these employees to work on more important work. Outsourcing your IT doesn't have to replace your IT department in totality. They can coexist and work together to get more done, in a shorter time.

3) Expertise

When you outsource work, you are essentially hiring an entire company of professionals, whose entire job is to do that one thing very, very well. When it comes to IT outsourcing, you can be fairly confident that those you are paying are exactly that - professionals. They are up-to-date with the latest tech, rules and regulations, and software/ firmware updates. As an added bonus, you're also going to save money on training, as you won't need to spend time and money to train an IT company, whereas with a new IT hire you would.

4) Focus

There are only so many hours in a day, and a lot less in a working day. No one is a superhero. No manager, staff, or department, no matter how amazing they are at their job, can do everything. By outsourcing specific tasks or jobs, you can effectively free up more time for yourself, or others in your team so that they can focus more on work that matters. For example, work you could outsource in the IT department could be a new server setup. By hiring a company to do this task, you are freeing your own team up so that they can focus on monitoring the well-being of your entire infrastructure.

5) Equalizer

Not everyone is rich, and not every company is a fortune 500. Especially startups, or SMBs. Some companies can afford to hire a 500 person IT department to handle every aspect of their IT. But, this isn't the case for a lot of others. By outsourcing work, you are bringing in a team of professionals, at a lower cost, to help level the playing field, and bring you and your company up to pace with the bigger ones.

The benefits to outsourcing cannot simply fit in one short article (unless you feel like reading for hours!). MicroAge is a full service IT firm. We can handle everything you will ever need in your IT department. Feel free to reach out to me to find out how MicroAge can help you save money, and time. (P.S., what are some ways outsourcing has helped you? Let me know in the comments!)