Your business is growing, and that’s terrific! How is your technical support holding up, though? Could it be time to consider technical support outsourcing?
Did you know that the average business owner works around 50 hours per week?
If you’re busy running your business, you might not have the time to deal with IT issues. Following this, you might be interested in hiring an outsourced IT support company.
Read on, and you’ll learn more about the pros and cons of using a company that provides technical support outsourcing. If you want to fix up the IT side of your business, you’ll soon discover how an outsourcing company can be of assistance.
Let’s begin!
What Does It Mean to Outsource Technical Support?
Before we talk about anything else, we should probably cover what it means to outsource technical support.
In most cases, outsourcing technical support simply means that you’re hiring a company that’ll take care of the IT side of your business.
F1 IT Support Perth advise that an outsourced company ensure your hardware is appropriately networked and neatly configured to make for easy changes and fixes down the line. They’ll also manage the software in your business, ensuring that everything is updated and running smoothly.
In most cases, IT support companies will respond to urgent calls, should there ever be a problem with your IT systems.
Is It a Good Idea to Outsource Technical Support?
Now that you understand the basics of outsourcing technical support, you might want to know if it’s a good idea to invest in this kind of solution.
Well, having an outsourced technical support team offers many benefits when compared to having an in-house IT support team.
One of the key benefits associated with hiring an technical support like convergeddevices that provides you with all the tech support that you need and also give advice and solutions for common troubleshooting issues.
Another reason for this is that you won’t have to take on any fulltime staff, and therefore your payroll bill will be a lot lower.
In most cases, if you hire an IT outsourcing company, you have to pay a monthly fee to use their services. A lot of the time, this monthly fee is often lower than what you’d allocate towards fulltime staff.
Another benefit is that you don’t have to pay for training costs.
If you have an in-house IT team, you will have to train them so they know how to work with the latest developments in the IT world. This cost is often in addition to the usual payroll costs you’d have when hiring employees.
If you hire an outsourced support team, you don’t have to deal with these training costs. This is because the outsourcing company will be the one that trains their staff. As a result, you get access to highly trained experts, without having to pay for any training expenses.
What Are the Downsides of Investing in Outsourced Support?
You might now have some questions regarding the downsides of using an outsourcing service.
Well, one of the main downsides you might face when working with an outsourcing company is that you may have to deal with delays.
This is because an outsourcing company only has so many technicians at a given time. If a lot of clients need to use the outsourcing company at the same time, it might be a while before you get the help you need.
Yet, if you have inhouse staff, you’ll never have to deal with this kind of thing.
The staff will only be tasked with working on your systems and so they won’t have any other work that they’ll have to prioritize.
Security is another thing you need to consider when investing in outsourced support.
When you work with an outsourcing company, it’s worth noting that the company will have remote access to your computers. The problem here is that you don’t know how vulnerable the outsourcing company is to a cyberattack.
If a hacker gains access to the company’s computer systems, they could potentially use the remote access feature to steal your files. Now, lots of outsourcing companies will say they take security very seriously and that they’ll do everything they can to prevent an attack.
However, while the company might say this, you need to think about how much you actually trust them. If one of their staff members makes an honest mistake, you could find yourself at the mercy of an attack.
Be Careful If You’re in a Niche Industry
At this point, you might’ve warmed to the idea of working with an IT support company.
However, if you work in a niche industry, you need to practice some caution.
This is because an outsourcing company might say that they can support you when, in reality, they can’t. This is generally because businesses in a niche industry, tend to have very bespoke IT needs.
For instance, it might be the case that your business uses a special kind of software that’s designed specifically for your industry. If that’s the case, an IT outsourcing company might not have any staff that’ll know how this software works.
Following this, they won’t know what to do should there be a problem with the software. In an instance like this, it might be a better idea to hire someone inhouse, of whom has a better understanding of industry software.
Work With a Local Company
If you’re ready to hire an outsourcing company, you should think about working with a local firm.
One of the main reasons for this is that sometimes, you will need help with the hardware side of your IT systems.
Engineers can’t do this work remotely, and so the support company will need to send someone out. Thus, if you work with a local firm, it will take less time for the engineer to reach you, thereby allowing you to address the problem in a shorter time frame.
Luckily, you can find a local IT outsourcing company by performing a quick search online. So, if you live in LA, you might just search for something like “LA outsource technical support”.
Will You Invest in Technical Support Outsourcing?
Technical support outsourcing is a good option for anyone that wants to avoid the costs of hiring fulltime IT staff.
That said, outsourcing the tech side of your business does come with some downsides, and you need to consider these before you make a decision.
In any case, each business is different, and you need to review your company to decide what is best for you. Provided you understand the pros and cons of each option, you should be able to select the solution that’s right for your business.
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