IT solutions and services can seem expensive and often business decision makers, with no IT experience, are left to define the technical future of their company. The IT infrastructure can be pivotal to a company’s destiny, wrong decisions here can lead to more costs than benefits.
Often the decision can be whether to employ in-house staff or to employ an outsourced IT company. IT support companies offer an AMC (annual maintenance contract) but how does this compare to hiring yourself and could outsourcing your IT save you valuable money and time?
Hiring
Hiring an IT specialist is a tricky task. An employer can appear spoilt for choice, as there are just so many options. Even once the choice is narrowed down it is incredibly difficult to ascertain whether the information on a CV is actually correct. Too often is it seen that an employer chooses their target only to find out that not even the core abilities can be met.
Only if you have a vast, up to date knowledge of IT systems and can test and qualify the potential employee should this be considered a valid option. All too often do business suck up the cost of employing and training only to be left with a difficult decision to make after a few months.
By employing an IT support company, you employ experience and knowledge. A deeper dive into the company’s clients and references should give you the confidence to hire with ease. The service level agreements will also serve as an insurance to the quality and processes employed by the provider.
Single point of failure
If your business is hiring a single member of staff for the IT function you may suffer from a single point of failure. This is an IT term that refers to one thing being the one point that may cause a breakdown. For instance, what happens to the IT systems when this person is away on holiday or falls sick?
With an AMC, provided by an IT solutions company, you have a degree of assurance with the team that they supply. You may have a contact point but when that person is away, most suppliers will have a process that allows other members to step into their place. If you are looking to expore this route then it is important to ask the provider what this process is and how they employ it.
Knowledge base
Much like the single point of failure is the knowledge base scenario. If you are hiring internally, you rely entirely on the experience and knowledge of that person. Often IT personnel are trained in a limited range of software and hardware. They may not even know of the best IT solution for your company let alone employ it. Many businesses are swayed by the IT manager’s opinion and this is often based on limited knowledge.
By employing a IT service company in Dubai, you get a collective knowledge. Your personal account manager may not know the solution that answers your needs but they will have a bank of information to draw on from their team. This is often based on real scenarios that have been experienced or from industry best practices.
Service levels
When considering the potential cost of an IT solution and its provider, it is equally important to assess the cost of it going wrong. Although employing personnel yourself may appear better value, how do you determine the value and the quality of the support given.
The best IT support providers will give you an AMC. A crucial part of this contract is the service level agreements. These are the parameters that define the service they will deliver and the metrics to which they associate success. An IT provider should be able to define exact potential fixes and align rigid timescales to these.
When choosing the best IT support for your business, it is vital that these points are addressed. What may appear better value for money at the outset may eventually cost you, and in IT these costs can be huge.
