Small business owners and managers tend to wear many different hats, and “IT Support” is often one of them. At some point, though, most will find that it’s time to bring in an expert.

How do you know when the time has come to outsource your IT? Here we’ll go over some of the signs that it’s time to take your IT hat off and pass it to a trusted IT service provider.

Outsourcing vs bringing in an employee

Before we start, a note on outsourcing IT support vs taking on an in-house employee or team. While employing someone to take care of IT is an option, there are some good reasons to look to an MSP:

• Recruiting and inducting a new staff member can be time consuming and expensive, but by outsourcing your IT you skip this step entirely and have instant access to a whole team of IT experts.
• Advances in technology happen fast, but you can be sure that an IT managed service provider will keep training their staff to ensure they’re up to date.
• Employing just one person with expertise in the many areas a business needs support can prove to be difficult, and you may end up compromising. With your managed service provider’s team at your disposal, you have a breadth of knowledge and experience across various disciplines, just at the end of the phone.

Signs it’s time to outsource your IT support

You don’t have enough time to do you “real” job

If the time you spend resolving IT problems stops you being able to get your own work done, you’ve got to consider whether this is an efficient use of your time. It’s great when employees show initiative, but they may be using their time to resolve issues that could very easily be fixed by an MSP.

In the long run, this time adds up and it’s time that could otherwise be used in advancing your business.

 You need to keep control of costs

Most managed service providers charge a set monthly fee, which works well if you have a monthly budget to apportion to IT. You’ll know exactly what charges you should expect to see on your bill each month, and your IT partner should make it very clear what services are included in this package.

 You’ve taken on more staff

Expanding your team is an exciting time, but it also means that there’ll be more users needing support, and more likelihood that things may go wrong or run slowly as more demand is placed on your IT infrastructure.

Adding new teams also means you’ll add more different types of problem. You may be used to sorting out that one particular issue that often occurs when your sales staff access the CRM, but now you’ve got a marketing department who use whole different suite of applications you’re not so familiar with.

With an MSP working for you, all of these worries are taken away and they can also manage new user (and leaver) procedures to ensure that everything is set up efficiently and securely. If new equipment is required, they can source and configure this, on how best to keep your network running smoothly with the increased number of users.

You’re handling change

We don’t mean coins!

Are you, like many businesses, moving to a more flexible working policy with employees working remotely? Staff that work from home still need IT support, in fact, they’re likely to need it more than ever.

Add to that the new pressures placed on your network by remote working and a host of cyber security issues to address. A good managed service provider will have helped implement many remote work set ups and will be able to anticipate and prevent potential problems.

Everything’s running a bit slowly

When everyone starts work at 9am and is logging in to your systems, it all goes quite slowly. You’ve got some large files to send to a client and they take an age to upload. There’s a small update to be installed on an application you need to use but it’s taking so long you have to find something else to do in the meantime. Does any of this sound familiar?

An MSP will help you to increase capacity where necessary, update equipment and make sure your network is optimized to run quickly and efficiently.

You’re not confident in your cyber security

We know that cyber security is a big concern for businesses, with more than a fifth of them now discussing cyber threats at board level, but this doesn’t always translate into action; only 9% have a documented cyber security policy. Although there’s a lot that can be done by individuals to help keep your business secure, there’s also a lot of advanced management that goes into keeping a company’s network safe from outside threats.

When you’re feeling out of your depth, it’s time to look at outsourcing to an MSP.

You’re not sure that your systems are up to date

Computers have a shelf life, Windows stops offering support for operating systems after a certain amount of time, and security patches are vital to ensure your applications are safe from outside threats.

It can be hard to keep track of all this, and as a result your systems can become slow and, worse, insecure. A good managed service provider will take care of this, keeping your operating system and applications up to date. If it is time to upgrade some of your equipment, they should be able to source equipment for you and will do their best to work within your budget.