Why pay for IT Support for your small business if you can do it on your own?
You have grown up surrounded by technology. You may have built your own computer and set up the computer network at home. So you could say that you know the technology in your workplace well, right? You could do it all yourself. By handling IT Support for your small business yourself, you can save some precious dollars.
But here’s the real deal...
If anyone says they know “technology” well, you should run away as quickly as you can. Technology is very vast and encompasses so much that it is impossible to know it “well”. You can, of course, be a specialist in a subset of technology. But you would need a supercomputer for a brain to even be fairly well-versed in all the technology used at your workplace. In any case, making things work in a business network environment is much more complex than doing the same at your home.
You can, of course, hire an IT Support Specialist. This is something you need to consider if you plan on taking your small business to an enterprise scale.
Here's what you should know about it.
Cost of hiring an IT Support for small business
According to Glassdoor, the average salary at SMBs for an IT Support Specialist is $53,871 in San Francisco. Adding HR, Administration, and Training, your costs will cross $65,000 per year.
In any case, IT is a vast field and your in-house IT specialist can’t handle it all alone. The IT support specialist job description contains only a subset of your tech support requirement. Your specialist will need the support of a Network Engineer, Systems Engineer, Security Specialist, and Project Specialist. These positions are a little higher-paid. This means you will burn through $350,000 to $500,000 of capital each year.
Therefore, outsourcing IT Services is a great bargain for small businesses. This is because you get access to an entire IT department at 10-15% of the cost of hiring your own team.
When should you hire an external IT Service provider?
Here are 7 signs that you need it support for your small business:
1. Your meetings take longer than planned
Are you surprised that having extended meetings is the first reason? We have all read about why and how meetings are inefficient. Yet they are a reality and often a necessity. But there is no reason why your meetings should last longer than planned on account of “technical difficulties”.
You probably spend a fair amount of time during or before every meeting fiddling with the WiFi in your conference room. You try to get Google Meet, Zoom, or GoToMeeting to connect. When all your team finally connects, you struggle to get your screen to show up on the Apple TV. And when everything appears to work, you have to deal with choppy calls. No wonder your 15-minute meetings take an hour.
Virtual meetings and video conferencing technologies are supposed to make collaborative activities easier and more efficient. If a room full of people have to wait while you try to go live for the umpteenth time, you should ask yourself...
“Can we afford to waste our time troubleshooting virtual meetings?”
Let’s talk about a more apparent sign...
2. You’ve suffered an IT security breach more than once
Many businesses tend to think of cybersecurity as a one-time project. You set up basic IT security policies, implement a few cybersecurity tools, and then forget about it. After implementing your IT security controls, you may be lulled into a false sense of security. This is very common if there are no IT security incidents for a long period.
“Thinking you are unhackable is one of the biggest mistakes you can make.”
It is a common misconception among small business owners that they are too small a target for cybercriminals. This can’t be further from the truth as shown by the 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report by Verizon. It states that 43% of cyber attacks were targeted at small businesses. What’s more interesting is that only 14% of small businesses rate their cybersecurity as highly effective.
Overconfidence and lack of preparedness make your business vulnerable to malware infections, ransomware attacks, and data breaches. No matter how small a security incident is, you must never ignore it. An innocent click on a harmless-looking link in a spam email can bring your entire business to a standstill. So, if you have experienced more than one security incident in the past few months, you need to hire reliable tech support.
An experienced IT services company will:
Help you weed out the common cybersecurity bad habits,
Implement IT security best practices and industry standards,
Monitor your IT security policies and keep them updated with the latest developments in security,
Conduct penetration tests and phishing drills to detect and fix vulnerabilities before they are exploited,
Regularly educate your employees about cybersecurity threats and preventive measures, and
Set up a comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plan.
Speaking of backups, do you know how yours works?
3. Your backup and recovery plan is a mystery
Every week 140,000 hard disks crash in the United States. But that’s not even the scary part. According to data collected by bostoncomputing.net, 60% of companies that lose their data will shut down within 6 months of the disaster.
Because of the rapid improvements in HDD and SSD technologies, more and more data is being stored in a single device. This brings with it the inherent risk of losing your data due to theft, accidental deletion, ransomware, or a hard disk crash.
This is any business owner’s worst nightmare. Loss of data causes long-term damage to your business. Getting your business back to its current working level will be a big challenge. Loss of data can cause an enormous loss of revenue. Your business may be able to deal with that. But more importantly, customers may never be able to trust you with their data again.
Even when faced with such grave business risks, many small businesses don't have a proper backup and recovery plan. Of those who do have a backup plan, many have no idea how they work, if they work at all. In one case, a new client pointed to hard drives in their network closet as their backup and recovery system. It turned out that the drives weren’t even connected to the network. Thankfully nothing untoward had happened, and we got there in time to set up a working backup and recovery system.
Your IT support service will help you:
Identify what needs to be backed up
Choose the right kind of backup- On-premises, Cloud, or a Hybrid
Create an effective disaster recovery system
This next one is a more common problem…
4. The productivity of your best employees drop
Have you noticed the billable hours of your best employees drop? Drops in billable hours can be especially painful if you charge your clients by the hour. If you notice this, you should consider if your billable hours are down because your best employees were troubleshooting network connectivity, computer, printer, or router problems.
It may seem a trifle that a few minutes here and there could have any significant impact. But, these small interruptions and lost time can cost you $6,876+ per employee per year. The calculations behind this figure are discussed in detail in our blog post: Cost Of IT Support For Small Business
A more grave impact of these interruptions can be on employee satisfaction. Owing to interruptions, your brightest employees may not be able to do their best work. This will, in time, cause them to be dissatisfied with their work. You don’t want that since superstar employees are in such short supply, especially in San Francisco.
This next one is a good problem to have…
5. Your company is growing
When you are scaling your business, you need to focus on a lot of things. Office space expansion, hiring, administration, company structure, maintaining your culture, and financial planning to name a few. You should try to delegate or outsource as many of these activities as possible. This will allow you time to focus on the most important ones- hiring, culture, and financial planning.
In fact, scaling your IT infrastructure is the last thing you would want to take on while your company is growing. As your company grows in size, the complexities in your IT infrastructure and operations also grow. But they don’t just grow linearly rather they grow exponentially. Getting proper IT management will give you the insurance you need to work without stress and focus on growing your business the right way.
A Managed IT Services company may not be able to prevent IT issues completely. But getting the right IT support for your small business will reduce the number of IT issues and their severity.
Another benefit of using an IT service desk when you are scaling is that they will help you avoid “technical debt”. Quick decisions regarding the purchase of equipment or services, adoption of new technology, etc. without foresight or proper planning work in the short term. But it will lead to the accumulation of technical debt that will hinder productivity and growth in the future.
So, if your company is growing, plan your growth right. Hiring IT services for your business will not only help make scaling effortless but it will also make future growth easier.
Now let’s look at a nagging problem rarely addressed…
6. You are always firefighting IT problems
Most of us have grown up with technology. You probably set up your home network and troubleshot common computer problems on your own. Therefore, you feel comfortable managing our IT needs at work. Even though you didn’t want to, you ended up managing the IT operations because your budget was too restrictive to spend on IT management. Your in-house IT expert is either you, another co-founder, or even worse, a highly paid staff member. And one of you spends most of your day fixing IT issues rather than the job you were hired to do.
This may solve the problem in the short-term but it is not sustainable. As your company grows, the demands on your in-house IT expert will grow exponentially. This increase in demand and lack of capacity will cause a bottleneck and result in a drop in productivity. You will always be running from one IT problem to the next.
When you firefight IT problems, you are always playing catch-up. You will lag behind your competitors who treat IT as an integral part of their business. Using the Plan, Build, Operate, and Monitor model of IT operations, you can turn your IT from a liability to an asset.
And when you do invest in your IT infrastructure…
7. Your investment in technology is not giving the desired ROI
Managing your IT operations is a huge challenge. It is an even bigger challenge when you have little or no IT expertise. Having built home PCs and networks, you may be confident in your abilities. But, making similar things work in a business network environment is a different ball game.
So it is very frustrating when you invest in a new piece of technology and it doesn’t work as expected. For example, you purchase expensive WiFi network equipment believing it will solve your spotty WiFi problems. But your office is located in a densely populated area such as downtown San Francisco where there is a startup in every building and ruthless competition for wireless frequencies. Without the proper setup and configuration, your network equipment can do little to improve your WiFi connectivity.
Making things work in the business environment is difficult because of complexities arising from the compatibility matrix of devices and applications being used. Poor decision making and lack of foresight can make IT seem like a cost center that keeps draining your budget.
An experienced IT services provider will help you avoid the common technology pitfalls. IT help desk companies can draw upon their vast pool of resources and extensive experience of providing computer support. They will set you up for success by implementing industry best practices and customized IT solutions.
Let’s sum IT all up
It doesn't matter whether you are running a tech startup, law firm, or nonprofit. If you aren't in the IT services business, you shouldn't focus on IT management. You should focus on how IT can enable you to achieve your business goals.
You may prescribe to the “hustle” philosophy and may want to do everything yourself- “an entrepreneur must be scrappy and frugal”, you say. But isn’t your time more valuable? As a business owner/entrepreneur, building your core competency should take up most if not all of your time. Your core competency adds the most significant value to your product or service and makes it difficult for your competitors to imitate your business.
When you invest in IT services, you don’t have to deal with tedious IT tasks. You can draw upon their experience to avoid common mistakes and lay the foundation for future growth. This will not only improve your efficiency but will also let you go home at a reasonable hour. It could be the beginning of a perfect work-life balance.
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About The Author
Hari SubediMarketing Manager at Jones IT
Hari is an online marketing professional with a focus on content marketing. He writes on topics related to IT, Security, Small Business, and Mindfulness. He is also the founder and managing director of Girivar Kft., a business services company located in Budapest, Hungary.