Thursday, November 8, 2007
Hire or Outsource?
Surely the question on the tip of many SME companies tongues when they are considering their IT support is, do we outsource or do we hire our own full time resource? Will we get better value from hiring one full time individual that can spend every minute of every day in our office rather than outsourcing for less or a similar budget to a company?
With the experience we have gained from taking over from lone IT managers and from working together with IT managers here are the questions that I think need to be carefully considered:
- Can you effectively hire or manage an IT resource? (it's not easy to get good technical people & managing them would be virtually impossible for the non technical)
- Is he or she likely to possess all the skills that your company will need?
- Will they have the expertise to advise you about new technology?
- Will you have peace of mind? How will you know if they are doing a good job? e.g. Is your data backed up properly and can it be recovered in a disaster?
- How will you cope during holidays and absence?
- What will you do if for some reason they don't come into work and you can't get hold of them and they haven't documented your information systems
- If your network operates efficiently, the support you need is available and this can be achieved in less than a full time job, what will this person do with the other 50 hours a month that are available?
- Will the resource get bored of working on the same old network day in day out? Technicians like to be learning new technology!
posted by James Stratton
Comments (0)
