Top 5 Reasons Why SMBs Must Rethink of Hiring an In-house IT Team for their Network Infrastructure

It’s so tempting for SMBs to want to hire an in-house IT team to manage their network infrastructure. After all, if you’re outsourcing to an MSP, you won’t have someone on site to attend to issues every moment of the day. On the flip side, you don’t have to pay for when your network is up and running smoothly if you have a Managed Services provider (many will guarantee 99% uptime) managing your network. Here are a few things you’ll want to consider before you hire another team member to support your network.

In-House IT Team v/s An experienced Managed Services partner

• Pre-built structure: A well-run MSP has the necessary structure of a full-fledged IT team. This means that they have tried and tested every single process. They have a systematic approach to the onboarding process to ensure that their clients are serviced efficiently regardless of which technician is servicing the user.
• Industry-leading Tools: Amongst the other aspects of having an in-house IT department, using industry-leading tools is very expensive. MSPs have already invested heavily in these tools to monitor applications, create tickets, manage your systems, and resolve incidents before they become a crisis. This ensures that their SMB clients can have the advantage of IT operations that allows these clients to compete at the enterprise grade.
• Reduced Costs: The tools mentioned above can cost upwards of a few hundred thousand dollars. You can avoid making the initial capital investment, which is huge for an SMB. Also, with experienced and efficient IT support technicians, you can save a lot of money by way of training and productivity. You can avoid the cost of having to pay for someone to hang around until an issue comes up.
• Existing Relationships: MSPs work with industry-specific vendors all day long and have existing relationships with them. This means that they can often negotiate better deals on contracts, push through orders faster, and can also have a closer point of contact when there are issues. As a single organization, you may not have the same leverage, regardless of your previous contracts with them.
• Skilled Resources: The most important element of an IT department is the experience and skills that they possess. From Tier 1 to Tier 4 support engineers, MSPS’s resources gain tremendous exposure through a multitude of customer issues on a day-to-day basis by understanding new security risks and identifying issues before they occur. MSP’s IT staff keep their skills honed and are much more competent by nature of the scope of their job than the average in-house technician. They can spread knowledge throughout their team and get regularly trained.

More often than not, your staff may have to do the balancing act by managing on-going user issues and last minute needs of your organization, but there is no doubt that outsourcing to an MSP is more beneficial than having an independent in-house team. It may seem safer to embrace what we know than to let go of the fear of the unknown. Quite often we hear our clients think that they need an additional onsite technician or a network administrator, but what they need is just a little bit more from their Managed Services Provider.

Here is a client story on how a leading Oil and Gas company gained access to new markets, products, and customers by partnering with an MSP to support its expansion for a robust and stable network infrastructure.