Congratulations! You and your startup business have made it past launch and are scaling up. Or perhaps you’re a mature company that is refining their process. In either case, your focus is now on your core business and you want to stay agile and responsive to your customers. You may have reached the stage where you’re wondering whether you should grow your own IT Department, or whether it makes more sense to partner with an IT firm that can use their resources and expertise to support your success instead.
How can I Decide What’s Right for my Business? Businesses are as unique as fingerprints, so your competitor could be using an entirely different strategy than you are, and still be successful. You’ll need to dive in and look at the benefits and drawbacks of taking your IT needs to an outside contractor, or continuing to grow your IT team in-house. Here is a list of components that can you evaluate to help you decide:
- Budget
- Security
- Compliance and Risk
- Qualifications and Experience
- Implementation Time
- Focus and Efficiency
- Now let’s take a quick look at each one of those areas a bit further so you evaluate the pros and cons.
Budget: There can be big misses in your IT budget if something breaks, if your technology needs a critical update, or if you need to hire more employees. A malware or ransomware attack can be financially devastating to a business of any size. Outsourcing can allow you to plan for a specific cost and protect you from unwanted budgetary surprises.
Security: Your cyber security defenses need to be top-notch, and it’s not just external threats you need to be aware of. Internal threats from employees accidentally falling prey to phishing attacks, to the theft of intellectual property can pose a danger. It can be very expensive to make sure you have all the firewalls, DMZs, applications, and then maintain it all with appropriate upgrades and patching. You will need to ensure your security team is up-to-date on certifications and using tried-and-true standards to base your cyber security strategy on—or you count on a trusted contractor to handle it for you.
Compliance and Risk: Most companies have compliance issues they need to monitor and be aware of in order to remain in business. For example, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA and PCI are just some of the most commonly known ones, and they all have specific IT standards and configurations that need to be met to be compliant. If you don’t have the experience in-house to make sure these are handled correctly, relying on an expert could be a smart move to help you understand why 302, 404, 409 and 802 are the most pertinent sections for IT when dealing with SOX compliance.
Qualifications and Experience: Your IT staff requires continuing education, certifications, best practices, and keeping up on the last technologies because it’s never standing still. Are you confident your IT team has the experience to deal with server or database migration, or a spear phishing attack? Or perhaps your IT team just needs mentoring or guidance for something like assessing cloud readiness, or doing a NIST security audit. When you collaborate with a company that specializes in technology, you benefit from the decades of education, certifications, and experience.
Implementation Time: It’s often said that time is money, and when it comes to scoping, planning, and implementing IT projects in-house, it couldn’t be truer. There is no doubt that a team who has done that same implementation before for other companies is going to be faster, more efficient, and more aware of possible pitfalls. Sometimes augmenting your in-house staff with an experience IT project manager can be a good compromise if you don’t want to entirely outsource.
Focus and Efficiency: You have limited time, resources and attention. Your company needs that focus to remain on your core business objectives without getting sidelined on IT problems or issues. Additionally, outsourcing allows you to free up space that could be used for expansion and create more efficient workflows and processes.
Summing it all up… You and your team have brought your business this far together, and now you’re prepping for many more years of success together. Keeping your IT in-house may be the right choice for your company. However, if you would like concierge IT services, an occasional managed resource to fill a gap, or a full-time trusted collaborator who can offer expert strategy, then consider IndyConn as your trusted partner. We would be proud to help propel your business to the next level.