Business and IT leaders are used to tackling challenging projects and juggling multiple balls at once. It’s part of what defines you and drives your passion for success. But good leaders also know when to ask for help.
When it comes to IT projects, many small and medium-sized businesses don’t have access to all of the IT resources they need.
For many such businesses with limited internal IT staff, it would place too much of a burden on your in-house team to take on the responsibilities of carrying out an extensive IT project on top of their already overloaded daily schedules.
It would also be too expensive to recruit and hire an entire team of IT professionals with specialized skills to carry out these types of projects, such as: cloud migration, legacy operating system updates, infrastructure improvements, cybersecurity compliance, or software development.
As a small business ourselves, at Kelser, we understand the need to balance your available resources and budgets.
In this article, we’ll walk you through the benefits of outsourcing your IT projects to an external IT services provider.
We’ll also cover some of the pitfalls with these types of relationships, so that you have the information you need to decide for yourself whether or not outsourcing IT project work would be a good solution for you.
Project work can have varying definitions of what’s included in the category, depending on the IT provider.
Since each provider has its own criteria for what’s considered a project, we’ll explain how we view it at Kelser.
IT project work is any large-scale enhancement, migration, upgrade, or installation service impacting most or all of your infrastructure and staff. These projects generally satisfy a targeted need, have definitive start and end dates, and include specific deliverables.
The project could involve your hardware, software, or both, as well as other services and functions related to your business operations, such as sales, supply chain management, network configuration, data storage, and customer relationship management.
Some SMBs have a small IT team that consists of a handful of IT professionals. Many times, however, it consists of a single person, or they have none at all.
With limited internal staff, it would be a leap to assume that your in-house IT team has both the time and competencies to implement the changes needed, ensuring they follow industry best practices and meet regulatory compliance standards.
Rather than placing undue burdens on your in-house team, it’s often more prudent and cost-effective to outsource IT project work to an external IT services company.
Here are some of the advantages of outsourcing IT project work:
In partnering with an IT service company, you instantly gain access to their deep bench of IT and cybersecurity professionals with broad industry and regulatory compliance knowledge.
It’s important that you first thoroughly understand the specific technical work you need done and the desired outcomes of the work. This will help you narrow your search field as you compare different providers capable of successfully completing the project.
By identifying the main reasons you’re even undertaking the project will help ensure that you can:
Hiring an IT services company brings certain obvious advantages, not the least of which is cost savings.
Since the project work is likely a one-time expense, or won’t need to be undertaken again for several years, hiring an outside company can save you a considerable amount of money by not having to hire your own highly specialized in-house team of IT experts.
With external IT support, you have the advanced technical skills you need, when you need them.
Using an IT services company can save you time in two different ways when tackling a large-scale project.
For starters, you’ll go into the project with a clear understanding of the project’s scope and projections for the length of time needed for completion.
Second, hiring an IT services provider means you won’t have to tax your limited internal IT professionals. This ensures they can focus on staying on top of your regular day-to-day needs and can handle any IT challenges that pop up.
If your business is like most small and medium-sized enterprises, you don’t have a full complement of highly skilled IT experts. A limited IT team can create inherent challenges when it comes to being able to take on certain IT projects.
Perhaps your IT staff is only trained to handle routine device and software troubleshooting issues, but lacks the technical know-how to spearhead a particularly complex IT project.
Maybe you have a handful of IT professionals who have advanced technical skills in specific areas—just not in the area needed to do to the project work.
Another possibility, as we’ve mentioned, is that you just have a bare-bones IT department consisting of one or two in-house IT professionals, or none at all.
By hiring an IT services provider, you gain the support and expertise you need to either augment your existing in-house team, or serve as a cost-effective solution when you have few or no internal IT staff.
As with anything, there are pros and cons to outsourcing IT project work.
Here are some drawbacks to consider:
Can you trust working with an external IT services provider to complete your projects?
Of course, it’s only natural as a business owner to instinctively want to limit access to your systems to project your sensitive personal information, proprietary business information, and other critical data.
With the rise in malware, data breaches, and other cyberattacks, it’s understandable that security of data is always top of mind.
While there can be risks hiring an outside company, the chances of some nefarious activity are slim to none when using a reputable IT services company. Not only would the company risk destroying its reputation and ability to attract future customers, but it would also likely face legal ramifications and significant financial loss.
Make sure you do your due diligence and hire a company with a proven track record of successfully completing similar projects, checking references and their business standing.
When contacting their previous or current clients, get their honest take on their experience working with the company, including service level agreement performance metrics such as project deliverables, quality of work, timeliness, and cost control.
Any time you hire someone unfamiliar with your business to alter a part of your IT environment, there will always be somewhat of a learning curve—for both you and the external company.
After all, no two businesses are exactly alike.
If you haven’t previously worked together, an IT services provider won’t have first-hand experience with your staff, systems, operations, company organization, or even the physical layout of your building and location of your IT equipment.
For this reason, it’s important that you’re prepared to acclimate the external IT provider’s team members who will be responsible for the project oversight and implementation.
Having an acclimation process at the start of the project will not only enable the provider’s engineers and other stakeholders to quickly get up to speed, but it’ll also give them a chance to explain how they work, request access to necessary information or equipment, and let you know about what you can expect during the process.
Although this may require a little time and effort initially, it will ultimately help streamline the work.
After reading this article, you now have a more thorough understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing IT project work.
Still, only you can decide if outsourcing IT project work makes sense for your organization.
At Kelser, we have more than four decades of experience helping businesses of all sizes complete enterprise projects to transform their businesses, improve efficiency, and give them a competitive advantage.
If you need guidance on strategic planning, budgeting, and implementing complex IT projects for your infrastructure, we’re here to help.
Contact us now by clicking the button. We’ll respond quickly to learn more about the work you need done and see how we can help you align your IT needs and long-term business objectives.