Is outsourcing IT support services the best thing ever to happen to your company? Or is it a nightmare from which you fear you’ll never wake? The answer to both is yes. Outsourcing your IT has the potential to power up your business faster than a golden retriever can inhale an unsupervised taco. But if not done well, things could get nasty.
So, if you’re tempted to join this little adventure we like to call “Outsourcing My Business IT Support Services,” take a gander at our handy guide that we hope will help you decide. In it, we’ll cover:
- The scope of outsourceable (it’s a word!) IT support.
- The pros and cons of outsourcing.
- Which IT support services are best or most easily outsourced.
- How your in-house and outsourced IT support can co-exist peacefully and productively.
*Use the links above to jump ahead to a particularly juicy chapter – but no spoilers!
Ethical Note:
We’re an IT support service provider. Do we want your business? Do Vulcans have pointy ears? Yes, and yes. Transparency is awesome, so we openly admit to having a vested interest in promoting our IT support services. What sets us apart is honesty. Yes, we want you to choose us, but only if we’re right for your business. Because that hard-sell approach is icky.
IT Support Services: A Definition and Some Examples
Ask your friends and family what IT support services means to them, and they’ll a.) each give a different answer and b.) think you’ve finally lost it. That’s because IT support means many things to many people, and there are different types of IT support tasks and degrees of service levels.
For some people, IT support means calling a help desk when their MacBook does that whirly rainbow freezy thing. For others, it means another company automagically takes care of their entire IT ecosystem, i.e., the components, networks, data, people, processes, and IT management.
Here’s how we define IT Support:
IT Support: The Ignition Definition
Information Technology (IT) support describes a wide range of assistance and services that help businesses fix, maintain, or improve their IT ecosystems with the aim of supporting their larger business goals.
Scope of IT Support: Some Examples
OK, so our definition of IT support basically says, “IT support services can be anything.” Maybe the pretty diagram below will be more revealing with some real-world examples of IT support services:
| Service | What It Means |
| IT Helpdesk | Supporting People An off-site call center staffed with (hopefully) knowledgeable experts to call when things break. |
| Troubleshooting and Repair | Fixing What’s Broken On-call IT experts diagnose and fix any element of IT infrastructure when things go wrong, e.g., hardware failures, software glitches, or cloud issues. |
| Asset Management | Keeping Things Running IT support services can be one, some, or all of the following: Tracking devices, maintaining an inventory of devices, onboarding and offboarding devices, maintaining spare devices, managing licenses, performance monitoring, reporting and analytics, performing and maintaining backups. |
| Security Management | Keeping Things SafeOne, some, or all of the following: Configuring devices for optimum security; wiping or locking compromised devices; update and patch management; enforcing security policies; identity management; performing vulnerability tests and training staff to deal with phishing. |
| IT Strategy | Keeping Things Moving in The Best DirectionIT strategists provide expertise for tasks including IT infrastructure optimization; horizon scanning; technology roadmaps; special projects; cost/benefit analysis; governance and change management. |
| Special Projects | Transforming Business OperationsIT support can include one-off interventions, e.g., cloud migration, help achieving SOC 2 compliance, disaster recovery, green initiatives, or implementing mobile device management. |
Companies that provide IT support services are often called Managed Service Providers (MSPs).
Outsourced IT Support Services: The Pros and Cons
You’ve seen that IT support services can cover pretty much anything IT-related. Sounds useful, huh? But it can’t all be rainbows and unicorns, can it? As Socrates probably once said, “Everything’s a trade-off,” (we’re paraphrasing) so let’s take a look at the pros and cons of outsourcing IT support.
Outsourced IT: The Pros
The three key benefits of outsourcing IT support revolve around cost, flexibility, and access to expertise.
Cost
Outsourced IT support follows the same cost motivation as outsourcing any other business service, like payroll, marketing, or facility maintenance: it’s almost always a cheaper option to bring in outsourced support than to pay for the salaries, benefits, and management time an in-house team requires.
Because IT is not usually a core business function in terms of what your business sells – unless you’re an IT provider yourself – then much of the time, it makes sense to outsource some of your IT. Note that we said some. This is because, when done right, outsourced IT and in-house IT working together can be a powerhouse of business productivity and progress, freeing up the in-house team for more strategic work.
Outsourced IT can also make your accountant happy because the cost of outsourced IT support is a regular and predictable quantity. It’s easy to figure into forecasts and cash projections.
Access to Expertise
Your in-house IT person can’t be expected to be an expert in every aspect of IT and keep on top of the latest technological innovations. Outsourcing IT support has the potential to give you access to every kind of IT expertise you could ever need: from specialist skills like cybersecurity, cloud computing, or device logistics to the seniority and breadth of experience to provide you with IT strategy and governance support.
Flexibility
With many outsourced IT contracts, services and payments are monthly. Because you’re not often locked into decades-long contracts, this means you can scale up and down services quickly – which is great for startups – or pick and choose as the business need arises. It’s also less painful, costly, and potentially more ethical than hiring and firing staff as the business rises and falls.
Outsourced IT Support: The Cons
Control
Yes, there are downsides, and one, at least, is unavoidable. That is control. As you’ve handed some areas of responsibility to a third party, you’ve less direct control over what actions they take. Yes, you’ll have a service level agreement, but their services are in their hands. How they operate their own business will have an impact on you. Let’s look on the dark side for a minute – something as severe as them going bust or having a data breach or systems outage is likely to disrupt or harm your business.
Security Issues
If you’re entrusting your own corporate data to a third party, they’d better be reliable and trustworthy. Security is an offshoot of control.
Cultural Integration
In Happy-Ever-After Land, your outsourced IT team and your own people work great together. They communicate with each other and get stuff done like a well-oiled thingamajig. Their values and expectations of the working relationship match up. Yay! This happens in real life, too, but it can take a bit of work, especially if an outsourced IT person works on-site. Organizational cultural fit is important.
Communication
Time zone and language barriers apart, communication can be a problem, especially when you’re transitioning into your IT support services. Clarity is key, and communication underpins this. Some common issues that arise include:
- Mismatched expectations. Does your team expect more of your outsourced IT helpdesk than your helpdesk is contracted to provide?
- Non-understanding of the business. Has your outsourced IT support provider failed to understand how your business works and the market in which you work?
- Faulty communication mechanisms. Does communication between your outsourced and in-house teams fail because of unlinked or mismatched platforms?
- Rapport issues. A lack of direct interaction can limit how effectively outsourced and in-house teams can work together.
Which IT Support Services Are Easiest To Outsource?
Some IT support functions are a whole lot easier to outsource than others. Easier functions:
- Are well-defined and clearly understood.
- Have standardized protocols.
- Are routine and operational in nature.
- Have clear guidelines.
- Don’t require customization.
It’s not rocket science. Outsourcing common, well-understood IT support services is simpler than outsourcing something more complex, strategic, or customized to your business that also involves a ton of stakeholders.
Let’s take a look at some of the more common IT support services that get outsourced regularly, on a scale of “As easy as taking candy from a baby” to “as easy as taking candy from a hangry Grizzly.”
You’ll see that the more customized services are more complex to outsource, but, heck, all of these are totally doable – if you’re prepared and you choose providers who are right for you.
Best Practices For Working Together Well
Congrats! Decent IT Support Provider Co. has won the pageant, and you’re all set to work together. Maybe they’ll just be helping your people when something breaks. Maybe they’re fixing the security gaps that a SOC 2 auditor dredged up. Or maybe they’re full-on slapping you with a complete IT ecosystem transformation and ongoing strategic advice. (They’re not called Skynet, are they?) Whatever they’re doing for you, the principles of creating and maintaining an optimum working relationship with your new provider are the same, and they’re based on communication, clarity, and collaboration.
Principles and Practices:
Managing any provider isn’t a set-it-and-forget-it situation, much as we’d all love it to be. Yes, you should be able to trust them to provide what you need, but you can’t leave it completely to chance. Dry your eyes because managing your outsourced IT support provider is really no different from managing any supplier: if you maintain good communications and are both clear on what should be happening, you’ll work well together.
Outsourced IT Support Is Pretty Useful, Really
Outsourcing IT support isn’t special anymore, and it’s easy to implement once you’re clear on what you want and have a process for choosing a supplier and integrating their services. Spoiler Alert: We offer a ton of IT support services that can power up your business without cheesing off your people, and we’ve got a fantastic collection of deliriously happy clients to prove it. If you’re tempted to dip your dainty tootsies into the warm pool of outsourced IT support, give us a call and tell us these two things about your business:
- What’s going wrong just a little too much, and
- Where you’d like it to be
We’ll grace your ears with our take on what’ll help. No hard sell. No obligation. Because that’s just rude.
Ignition is Silicon Valley’s best (and friendliest) IT security, compliance, and support team. Contact us now – chatting about IT support and cybersecurity is literally our favorite thing to do!