Outsourcing IT Can Help Solve the Staffing Shortage
In many industries, staffing challenges have made it incredibly difficult to keep businesses running smoothly. The IT industry, in particular, has faced ongoing staffing challenges in everything from cybersecurity to network management–and they seem unlikely to go away any time soon due to the lack of skilled individuals moving into those positions. As many as 45% of small and medium businesses, and as many as 67% of large businesses with more than 250 employees, suffer from immense talent shortages.
Fortunately, there is an answer to your IT staffing challenges: outsourcing IT.
Outsourcing your IT team can provide you with short-term answers to immediate needs.
You need to deploy a new hardware solution across your business, and you don’t have the team on hand that you need to make the rollout quick and effective. You need to implement new cybersecurity protocols, especially after the rise in cyberattacks on businesses of all sizes over the past year, but your team simply doesn’t have the skills needed to achieve your goals.
Outsourcing IT could provide the answer. An outsourced team has the capacity to provide you with immediate access to the skillsets you need most. You won’t have to go through a difficult hiring process or struggle to find new team members who have the right skills and capabilities. Instead, you can simply turn those tasks over to your outsourced IT provider, who will already have the staff on hand to manage those needs.
You’ll get access to IT professionals with all the skills you need, often for a lower cost than bringing them into the office.
IT professionals have a range of specialties and competencies just like professionals in any other industry. While some focus on network administration, others may have a stronger background in cybersecurity. Still, others may focus more on app development. Even within those fields, you will find professionals with high degrees of specialization or specific skills.
Hiring individuals with all of those skills can be time-consuming and expensive. When you work with an outsourced team, on the other hand, they will have employees with all of those skills and who are prepared to fill those roles within your company. Often, in fact, you will get access to team members with skills that you would not include in your hiring pool simply due to lack of availability or cost prohibitions.
Not only that, working with an outsourced IT team is often far less expensive than hiring an internal team to take on the same tasks. An outsourced IT team will charge you a specific rate based on the services performed. You won’t have to worry about the cost of office space, vacation time, or benefits for those employees, which can help drop your IT spend.
When you outsource your IT, you won’t have to worry about onboarding costs or lost time.
Onboarding new team members is an expensive, time-consuming process. Even adding a single new team member can cost an average of $4,000 in recruiting and onboarding–and then you’ll have the lost time that comes along with getting that team member up to speed. For an outsourced IT provider, on the other hand, keeping everyone informed about clients’ latest needs is part of the process. They will have access to everything they need to know about your processes, your goals, and your technology in one location, where employees can easily get their hands on it. Not only that, you won’t have to worry about the cost of onboarding, since you will continue to pay your IT costs as usual.
Outsourced IT can help you more effectively scale your business.
You can’t always predict the twists and turns in the market as your business grows. Sometimes, your business may see periods of exponential growth, when you have more business coming in than you know what to do with and you struggle to grow your team fast enough. Other times, you may need to reduce some of your services, including IT, for a period of time while your business recovers from a downturn in the market.
By working with an outsourced IT provider, you can quickly and effectively scale your business to reflect your current needs. During periods of growth, you can easily add extra support; and during periods when you need less IT support, you can easily shift your services back without having to worry about laying off existing team members.
You’ll have an easier time accessing exactly the right people for the job.
During periods of high demand in many fields, when solid employees are hard to come by, you may find yourself accepting “close enough” instead of holding out for employees who will provide the services and great fit you really need for your team. One prospective employee might seem like a great personality fit, but lack the skills needed to excel in managing your IT needs–or the particular hard skills you need at that particular juncture. Nevertheless, you might choose to bring that person on board due to your lack of available candidates.
Another candidate might have all the necessary skills, but lack the great personality fit you hope for on your team–and unfortunately, one “bad fit” can permanently impact your company culture and the overall happiness of your team.
When you outsource your IT, you don’t have to settle. You’ll get access to great people who will work smoothly with the culture of your office and your specific needs, all while providing you with access to the broad array of skills your business needs to keep functioning at peak efficiency.
If you’ve been struggling with staffing shortages and the challenge of keeping your IT department running smoothly when it seems as though there just aren’t enough people available to fill those roles, we can help. Contact us today to learn more about our outsourced IT services and how they can help you navigate staffing shortages and solve many of the challenges you face in filling out your IT team.
LAN Infotech is a Microsoft Cloud Services Provider, IT Managed Support company and a leader in helping law firms, nonprofits and medical organizations deploy cloud solutions, manage computer networks, keep data protected and top technology management company. Businesses like yours need technology support to run highly-effective organizations.
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