Outsourced IT Services: What Are The Pros And Cons?

Benefits And Drawbacks of Outsourced IT Services

Sure, saving time is great. But we promised you a whole list of other reasons you should schedule a call to find out how to outsource your IT services. And just so we don’t seem biased, we’ll include the most common drawback we hear about outsourcing, too, so you can make the decision that’s truly best for your business.

PRO: You’ll likely save money.

Right off the bat, many business owners dismiss outsourcing as an option because they think it will cost more than keeping all operations under one roof. When you take a look at the dollar signs in front of a third-party service, it’s only human nature to wonder if you could do it more cheaply if you hire someone yourself.

But the cost of hiring, training, and paying for a dedicated IT person (or department) often takes small business owners by surprise when they do it for the first time. It’s quite a leap in costs to maintain an in-house IT staff when you’re used to handling technical issues yourself or asking Rosita in HR to run a malware scan on incoming company emails from time to time.

Consider that when you hire someone, you’re agreeing to pay their salary indefinitely until they quit or you let them go someday. Now, compare that to outsourcing with BEMO. As a third-party contractor, we do our best to earn your business every single day, because our arrangement happens on your terms. If you just need some assistance in the short term, you can always work with us for a few months and then take the reins back until something else happens and you need more help.

PRO: You’ll have access to a larger pool of knowledge and resources.

If you do hire one or two IT people to address your company’s growing tech needs, you might have to prioritize which problems most urgently need solutions. It’s tough to find one person who excels at multiple specialties under the general “IT” umbrella. And if you do find such a person, their salary will probably have a lot of zeros in it.

In comparison, BEMO’s IT team has many specialties, decades of combined experience, and one passion uniting them: we all love to help small and medium-sized businesses get the IT help they need.

• In search of someone to secure your company network? We’ve got you covered.
• Need a software expert who can help you switch your stack to something more useful? You got it.
• Do you need a patient soul who can painstakingly search and destroy every virus in your system following a cyber attack? We’ve got folks who can handle that, too.

PRO: Your moonlighting employees can focus on their regular jobs.

Let’s say instead of a full-time IT person, you have one really overworked employee (or a handful of employees) who’s in charge of everything IT-related in addition to their normal duties.

By day, they’re your accountant, your receptionist, your janitor, or your salesperson. By night (and twenty million times each day whenever something goes wrong), they sort out all the technical tangles and make sure your software and cybersecurity systems are up to date and playing nicely together.

If your IT moonlighter’s bloodshot eyes and total dependence on caffeine have you concerned, it’s time to outsource and give them a break.

PRO: You’ll have 24/7 support.

It would be nice if computers only crashed when it was convenient and you had time to repair them. But in reality, you’re most likely to get a Blue Screen Of Death at 1 a.m. as you finalize your last-minute preparations for the huge presentation you have to give to the board in the morning.

For those times when you just want to throw the whole computer out a third-story window and swear off technology altogether, we’re here for you. It doesn’t matter if it’s the weekend, the dead of night, or in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner; at BEMO, there’s always someone available to take your call.

CON: Your remote IT team will be… well… remote.

In a time when every business seems to be ditching its bricks and mortar and nearly every employee conducts meetings from home with pajama pants and slippers on under their desks, there’s something to be said for good old-fashioned office dynamics.

When your monitor dies, you accidentally click on a suspicious link in your email, or your printer starts churning out nothing but cat memes when you really need that report on your desk, it’s nice to be able to walk down the hallway and ask your IT guy or gal for help. That person knows your business intimately because they’re a part of it, and that’s something that’s tough to recreate outside of your walls.

It’s understandable if you’re hesitant to make the leap to a fully remote IT team. But if you miss our beautiful faces, remember we’re just a Zoom call away. With time, we’ll get to know you and your business and build a relationship to rival any in-house IT department.

Here Are Some of BEMO’s IT Outsourcing Solutions

When it comes to IT services and outsourcing with BEMO, you may be wondering how it all works. Can you pick and choose the things you need help with? Or can you just hand us the keys and take a nap in the backseat while we handle everything?

Happily, either way works!

The following list of common services isn’t exhaustive by any means, but it should give you an idea of where you’d like to start.

• Software updates
• Malware scans, solutions, and prevention
• Management of employee accounts
• New employee IT setup
• Patch installations
• Cybersecurity configuration and upkeep
• Server and cloud management
• Fixing general computer-related issues

Glance through this list and make a mental note of everything you don’t want to handle in-house. If your answer is “everything,” that’s fine, too! Just let us know you’d like us to be your dedicated IT team, and we can take it from there.

Reach out with questions, requests, or just to say hi.