The Costs of Hiring an In-House IT Team vs. Outsourcing IT Service

Training and certifying new IT employees can be a costly and nerve-wracking experience, but it's a necessary process you have to go through before handing over the reins of your company's unique, sensitive IT ecosystem to unfamiliar newcomers. You want to be able to rest easy, knowing that a team of professionals has your IT operations handled and under control. After all, the last thing you want in the middle of the night is a call that starts with, "Yes, you know our server? Well, it crashed. But don't worry, we'll figure out why, eventually." The costs of not certifying employees are clearly higher that the cost of doing so.

If you do hire new employees, properly certifying them allows you to be confident that they will be familiar with, and able to, solve issues as they arise, and to increase the system's efficiency and effectiveness, perform upgrades and keep usual operations running smoothly. However, things might start to look bleak as you get out your calculator to work out how much this will cost you.

Start with the prices of the individual training and certification programs, but don't stop there. You'll also need to price out the cost of their salaries while they complete the training programs, as well as the price of training equipment, space and utilities, and the cost of the recruitment process of evaluating candidates to objectively judge whether they will be successful IT professionals after training. Of course, there's always the risk of lost investment if your fully trained employee chooses to leave at some point in the future, and repeating the process is required to replace him.

After all of these considerations, you may be looking around, hoping to spot a more reasonable solution. IT outsourcing services can provide you with the perfect situation. You can assign your IT operations to a team of fully trained, responsible professionals, skipping the expensive certification stage and moving straight to a custom solution that is just right for your business's needs. Compared to the expense and risk of building your own in-house team, this can be a much more viable option, especially for small to average-sized companies.

Whether a business chooses to invest the time to train an in-house team, or outsources to a company already equipped to handle their needs, it is vital that competent individuals are in charge of your IT system. Taking the time to properly add up the costs and work involved in training, then objectively compare them to the costs of outsourcing, can save your business money and stress in the long run.