What Are the Pros and Cons of Outsourcing IT?

Featured article by Ryan G., Independent Author

Outsourcing is becoming more common than ever before. There are a lot of things to consider before deciding whether it’s right for you though. Here are the pros and cons.

Pros

No Office Politics

One of the great things about removing IT provisions from your office is that you put distance between the business and the IT staff. This might sound harsh, but a source of office friction is often down to IT problems. But if the IT workers are in a different location, there’ll be less office politics to deal with.

Working in close contact with people doesn’t always go to plan, as much as you might want it to. So, this distance can make the workplace more peaceful and more harmonious. You’ll also be able to break off the contract with the company smoothly and easily if you find that you need to.

Lower Costs

This is probably the thing that makes outsourcing IT so attractive to a lot of businesses. Running costs in a business always seem to be too high, and every business owner does what they can to reduce them. But that’s often easier said than done. So, when outsourcing offers a concrete way to reduce costs, it’s a good idea to go for it.

Contracted employees (which is the kind you use when you outsource) are always cheaper than hiring staff on a full-time or even part-time basis. It’s by far the most cost-effective way to get the work done. For businesses looking to cut costs without seeing a dip in quality, this is the best option.

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 Expertise

Outsourcing your IT needs to a company means they’ll be there to spot and repair any problems that arise. To do this, they have to be experts in their field. If you kept your IT in-house, you probably wouldn’t be able to use such talented staff. Outsourcing companies have a huge team of experts, and you simply couldn’t compete with that.

As a result of this, you get a much greater service by outsourcing, and your IT system will be better and more efficient than ever before. Even if you only use an IT support company, the support will be swift and better than you could provide in-house. So, it’s definitely worth outsourcing if you want to improve the efficiency and quality of your IT system.

More Spare Time

If an external company is dealing with all your IT needs, it follows that you’ll have more time to look after other aspects of your business. All business owners find themselves short of time now and then so that extra spare time could make a really big difference. You’ll no longer have to worry about tasks piling up so much.

All you’ll have to worry about is making sure you make the most of all that spare time you will have on your hands. And I’m sure you won’t have any trouble finding tasks to fill your time with. This will all make your business move much faster, as you won’t be held up by tasks that are slowing you down. Over the long term, this will lead to a boost in productivity.

Cons

Less Control Over Data Security

You lose a lot of control over your data and information when you hand it over to an external company. All of a sudden, you can’t control what happens to your data, someone else has to do this. This can cause major problems if the company you outsource to isn’t very good at looking after your data.

If the company did get hacked or leaked sensitive information, it would be your business that has to deal with the fallout. The responsibility still falls to you, whether you’re outsourcing to an external company or not. That’s why you need to make sure you can rely on the company before a deal is signed.

You Have to be Able to Trust Them

This is where trust comes into the equation. If you can’t trust the company to do the work properly, quickly and securely, you might want to reconsider the agreement. Don’t be afraid to pull out of the deal if you don’t feel like you’re getting what you originally signed up for.

Outsourcing is great for a lot of reasons. But it’s not so good that you should not bother to monitor the company. You need to keep tabs on what they’re doing and analyse their performance. If you find that they’re not doing anything useful for the company, going back to in-house IT should be considered.