In-house vs Managed IT Services – The Best Choice for Your Business

The debate over In-house vs Managed IT services is an ongoing one. There is no universal right answer; the right answer would be to find out what is the best choice for your business. In this post, we narrow down the debate to the important points to help you decide.

Skillsets required

The skillsets required for the functions is a major deciding factor on whether you should outsource your IT to a Managed Service Provider (MSP). With an MSP, you get a diverse, updated, and creative solution. There will be a team of diversely skilled people backing an individual. An inhouse employee will not be able to provide such a diverse skillset.

MSPs will also regularly train their employees to keep them updated with the current technologies. You get the benefit of this updated knowledge without having to pay for the additional training cost, that you may incur for an inhouse employee.

Simple tasks can be kept inhouse and complex tasks can be better managed with the experience and teamwork of a professional MSP. If the task is simple, you may be able to hand it to a single employee. Some businesses prefer to outsource simple tasks too.

Scalability

With MSPs, you can easily scale up or down your operations depending on the business needs at the time. Scaling up inhouse IT services is not easy as you need to find and hire staff as well as train them. Scaling down also has its own set of issues for an in house IT team. With scalability issues, an inhouse team can be underworked or overworked depending on the situation.

Flexible availability

Inhouse employees will be available only during normal business hours. IT emergencies may happen during off-hours too. A managed IT service provider gives you the flexibility of off-hours support. You can include the clause in your contract.

MSPs will also provide backup for a sick or on-leave employee. With inhouse, you will have to train and arrange for backups for an absent employee.

Onsite vs Offsite

If your business requires client-facing staff, you may prefer inhouse staff, as this gives you more control. An interesting point to note, though, is many managed service providers, provide resource support. That is, their employees are available to provide services as inhouse staff and take on client-facing responsibilities as de-facto employees. This is one advantage of MSPs – they develop familiarity with your business quickly and integrate well with your business due to the training and skill development efforts.

Costs

This is an important, perhaps the most important consideration for some businesses –

Salary Cost

The salary cost of maintaining an individual inhouse IT team is much higher than what you need to pay to an MSP. You’ll need to pay higher salaries for higher-skilled staff. This cost gets reduced to a great extent with an MSP. So, essentially, you’ll be paying lesser for the same skill set.

From an HR perspective, you’ll be responsible for paying salary and benefits to the inhouse staff. With an MSP you’ll be paying the company, and they’ll be responsible for the salary and benefits to their employees.

Training Cost

You’ll need to constantly train your IT team as IT is a fast-changing and evolving area, and your employees need to be updated about current industry standards. The training costs will be high. With an MSP, the training will be taken care of by their training department, at no extra cost to you.

Other Costs

Utilities, office space and rent, infrastructure costs, equipment, and systems, all have costs associated with them if you go for Inhouse employees. These costs are taken care of by the outsourcing company if you chose to go with an MSP.

Ultimately, it’s about your business and its requirements. If you want creative, skilled, and innovative work with some degree of control, without the cost and hassle that comes with managing an employee Managed Service Provider, is the best choice for you.

To get expert advice contact us or email us at helpdesk@computingaustralia.group.