IT has clearly moved from luxury to essential. Cybersecurity makes IT a necessity in today’s environment, whether you have two employees or 2,000. When it comes to adding IT to an organization, often the choice is between hiring internal IT personnel or outsourcing IT operations to an external partner.
For many organizations, the IT role is initially filled by someone with basic computer knowledge. However, as the organization grows and IT needs evolve, this additional work quickly becomes overwhelming and moves beyond the capabilities of someone with basic computer knowledge. This leads to the need for IT professionals with more specialized expertise, which means additional costs for the business.
Many business leaders are experts in their industry, not necessarily in information technology. When hiring much-needed IT, there are more options beyond the traditional way organizations typically fill a needed position: hiring new personnel to fit their budget. When it comes to a financial decision, maximizing value for money is imperative.
Whether you’re considering upgrading your IT or hiring new personnel, there are several considerations to make when adding a vital role like IT to your organization. It is essential to understand the different options and make the right choice.
Option 1: Internal IT personnel
The traditional option for any organization needing specific talent is to hire a new employee with the right skills. However, this can be challenging in the IT world, especially for a business leader somewhat unfamiliar with the industry.
Often organizations settle for the general knowledge of a single IT person to stay safe from cyberattacks and remain operational. While this option may appear to be an ideal solution, there are many aspects to consider before hiring an internal IT person.
Recruiting and retaining tech talent is difficult
Recruiting IT talent has become very difficult recently as the demand for qualified professionals grows. According to CNBC, U.S. employers posted 1.1 million tech job openings in the first quarter of this year.
Because of labor shortages, for the first time ever, lack of capital was pushed from its top spot as the number one challenge for small businesses. 55% of all small business owners cited employee recruitment and retention, making it the most significant challenge.
Qualified talent is expensive
The extremely high demand for tech talent combined with the lower number of available candidates makes finding the right IT person difficult and expensive. In the current market, a qualified IT person typically costs a company upwards of $75,000 annually.
For many smaller organizations, this price tag can be shocking to their bottom line.
A hiring crisis
Workers are leaving their jobs in record numbers due to a lack of childcare, low wages, long commutes, and changing values and priorities. Small business owners reported that hiring the right talent has been their biggest challenge yet, followed by retaining or motivating employees.
SMBs are finding they need to lower expectations when hiring! Getting top talent would require digging deeper into the company’s financial reservoirs.
Overestimate the amount of work required
Small and medium-sized businesses often make the mistake of overestimating the workload for an IT person. For a company of 50 to 75 computers or less, the crucial IT activities (network maintenance, tech support, cybersecurity updates, etc.) could be accomplished by working part-time. This makes it difficult to justify spending $75,000 on essentially a part-time employee.
A single employee or internal IT person can be limited in the scope of their knowledge and experience. Often focused on one industry or a single set of tools, this focused expertise can be limiting to an organization. An IT person needs to be comfortable with a large variety of solutions and be able to suggest the best; that’s why diversity of experience is paramount.
More often than not, because a qualified IT person can be expensive, SMBs will settle for an underqualified individual who fits within their budget. With cybersecurity as the primary concern, simply having someone to monitor IT and security is worth any investment. However, this is not the ideal option. There is a better solution that is affordable, qualified, and experienced.
Option 2: External managed service provider like tca SynerTech
Knowing you need experts is one thing; finding experts is another issue. With the recruitment process costly and time-consuming and a qualified IT expert costing over $75,000 yearly, smaller organizations might not need a full-time IT person to remain secure and operational.
Budget-friendly options are not ideal
Looking for more budget-friendly options typically yields individuals who are less capable or unable to bring the well-rounded expertise an organization needs.
Cost savings
Many smaller businesses can hire an entire IT department for less than the cost of a minimum wage employee by partnering with tca SynerTech. By paying for only the service you need, it is possible to have a team of IT experts for less than half the cost of a single IT person. This is a massive saving compared to the cost of hiring internal IT personnel.
Personalized support
The best option for small and medium-sized businesses is the unique teams that only tca SynerTech offers.
Our unique approach means your IT team will only serve a limited number of clients, ensuring you will know them by name. We will never use large call centers that treat clients like numbers. You will know who to call with all IT-related issues, not which company, but the name of a real person.
Well-qualified team of experts
With the talent acquisition left up to TCA, an organization’s leadership is able to focus on growing their company rather than recruiting an IT person. TCA has experience recruiting the best IT talent from around the country, so they were able to bring in a turn-key IT department, complete with expert technicians they know by name, C-level leadership, cybersecurity, and training for their employees—all without the HR headache.
Improved business operations
The right technology improves business operations and ultimately keeps the company operational. Employees can communicate more effectively using tools like Microsoft Teams. Tools like Microsoft Teams can also replace the business phone system. However, these tools need to be correctly set up and maintained by an IT professional.
Our IT teams bring enterprise-grad backup and recovery solutions, so there is no need to worry about losing data due to disaster, ransomware, or even accidental deletion.
Scalability
With tca SynerTech, scaling is as easy as adding a new user, unlike with an internal IT person, where it may be necessary to hire another individual. As an organization grows and IT needs change, there is no need to hire new IT personnel; all changes and updates to technology will be taken care of by tca SynerTech.
More time to focus on the business
A turn-key IT department frees management and owners to focus on operating the business. Management now has more time to focus on growing the business without the need to recruit, onboard, train, and retain a new employee.
Make the right choice
With tca SynerTech, your organization gets an entire team for less than the cost of a low-level employee. Any size organization can benefit from over 25 years of experience in many industries and with many different solutions. Take advantage of this diversity of expertise to lower expenses, increase cybersecurity, and ultimately remain operational.
Take the guesswork out of IT, lower expenses, and hire a team of experts from tca SynerTech.
