Having difficulty managing IT services in house -- looking for a cost effective alter

[Irish1970]

With the state of the economy my company is looking to cut costs and have decided we spend too much on our in-house IT staff. One of the possible solutions we have been thinking about is outsourcing IT to because we think it will be more cost effective. Since we have never outsourced, I am trying to get some information from others that have already been through it. Does anyone have recommendations for an affordable IT company?

[vangogh]

My outsourcing has been very limited. On occasion I have a friend of mine help me out with some work, but it's never been IT work. There are a couple people here who offer IT services I believe and hopefully they'll see this thread and have some good thoughts.

My guess is there are companies or individuals in your area that can help. I'd probably just search "It services (your area)" and I'll bet you can find someone. How much they'll cost I don't know, but I would think you can find someone who isn't too expensive.

How many people do you have working for you now and how big are your IT needs? Is there a way you can have the people who work for you now take on more responsibility?

[billbenson]

Be careful as well. When I looked for a job a few years ago, I interviewed for a sales job with a couple of IT companies. One was credible the other one was a scam operation.

[orion_joel]

Maybe think outside the box. If you have IT staff at the moment, then maybe you could work with them to enable them to create the business that you outsource to. So rather then just sacking them when you outsource, you are cutting the full cost from your books, but enabling them to still provide the service.

I think if this worked well it would reduce your costs, and would enable them to be more effective. As the general thing i have noticed that people that are paid by a company often are not as effective with their time, as those that are being paid by the hour. Especially if they have other clients to provide for as well.

[jrrj]

You’ll find that there are many good IT companies to choose from. The first thing you have to determine is what services you need for your company. Some companies are better in one area over others. Plus, if you only need a few easy services versus more-complicated ones, it could affect your price quotes. You want to make sure the company you go with will be the one that best suits your IT needs.

[vangogh]

You want to make sure the company you go with will be the one that best suits your IT needs.

Good point. Different companies have different needs. You may only need a one person IT company to help you set up new equipment and check on it once a week or you may need to have larger staffed company monitoring your infrastructure daily.

There are definitely companies at either end.

[rezzy]

My first question, is what do you need managed?

Do you have people who need hands on computer help?
Servers to manage?
etc, etc.
This is a major consideration in who you should search and hire.

[Irish1970]

Thanks for the advice everyone. The plan is to let our three IT folks manage more of the engineering and design functions which originally were their job and have an actual IT company manage and maintain the server . A friend of mine told me about a company called Best IT. When I checked their website, it seems to have a good bit of information about what I should be looking for in an IT company so I plan to give them a try.

[AngieG]

My company is also spending a good deal of money using an in-house IT team, and we've considered looking for a cost effective alternative as well. Irish70, I see that you mentioned a company called BestIT--do you have a link for their webpage? Does anyone have similar recommendations for remote IT services?

We're interested in using a company that offers top quality, 24/7 remote IT support. Thank you!

[vangogh]

Angie what kinds of things do you need help managing. There are plenty of IT companies that can provide 24.7 remote support. If you can offer some of the specific of what you'll need them to do, I'm sure a few people here could come up with recommendations.

There's a site with the company name Irish mentioned. Just add .com to the company name. I'm not sure if it's the same one Irish meant, but I did notice it there.

[Boots]

I've worked in a large business with outsourced IT for a variety of functions, and also in my own ventures with some outsourced IT work. I myself am in IT and a highly technical person. Here is a summary of my experience.

Benefits:
-You can definitely lower costs, especially if you are willing to outsource work to other countries. This works best when you have variable IT demand (for instance, you need a web site redesign for 2 months, then you plan no IT projects for 6 months). Using short term contracts is great for that kind of thing.
-You can improve service. By drawing on the expertise of another specialty company, you don't have to train your own employees and can rely on their experts. Often they deal with hundreds of similar systems from a variety of companies every day.

Risks:
-You lose control of the knowledge of your system. Changing contracts in a year or two can be very hard if you don't keep knowledge in house - things like server configuration, upgrade processes, key people, and common performance and availability issues. I have had major problems with this in the past, when one provider kept upping the charges year over year and I finally made a switch to find that a lot of the standard processes we used were actually IP of the contractor, and were non-transferable to the new company.
-You potentially add risk to your data. If contract resources are working on a database server, they also have access to that data. If you have any personally identifiable information in there (like SSN and name info, CC info or bank account data), you have to be very careful about how you notify customers and your existing agreements.

I have had some brief conversations with Best IT, but have not personally used them. Most of my experience is with free lancers or larger firms like HP.