The decision on whether to outsource IT services as a start-up is an important one. There are many challenges faced by startups in terms of deciding what processes to take on versus what you should do in-house.
Ultimately, it’s difficult to facilitate growth when your workload becomes unmanageable. And IT is one of those tricky areas in which small problems can compound into big ones that take too much time and resources to fix alone. Here are six reasons start-ups should outsource IT services.
#1. Focus on The Core Business
Start-up founders are ambitious people who attempt to bring unique, innovative products and services that solve problems to a market. As a start-up founder, you want to grow and scale your business to serve a larger share of a market.
In the initial stages of your start-up project, your focus needs to be on the core business as much as possible. Handling IT services and the inevitable problems you’ll encounter can distract you from that core business.
Even if you have one or two co-founders with decent IT knowledge, the time spent on monitoring, configuring, and fixing IT systems and services is time that would be better spent on marketing your key product or service or improving its quality.
#2. Improved Information Security
Startups with limited information security expertise are easy targets for cybercriminals in the early stages of their growth. Some people mistakenly assume cybercriminals only target established enterprises because their data is more lucrative.
However, the statistics show that 43% of cyber attacks target small companies. While start-ups ultimately aim to become established large businesses through aggressive growth, they typically begin their journey as small operations.
You might understand the basics of running an IT department, but IT security is a different challenge. Cybercriminals are sophisticated technology users who can easily bypass basic security controls. Outsourcing your IT services can drastically improve information security.
#3. Cost Savings
When thinking about the cost of outsourcing IT, it’s helpful to consider the opportunity cost of managing your IT services alone. Bearing in mind that start-ups want to focus on aggressive business growth and scale quickly, getting bogged down by disruptions to IT services or system configurations ends up costing you time and money.
When you outsource your IT services, you’re hiring a dedicated team of people to support your business operations and help solve IT problems that you can’t afford to waste time on. For a start-up, time is money.
#4. Disaster Recovery
Many modern start-ups are highly dependant on a functioning IT system to support the delivery of key business services and products. What happens if your systems go offline and you don’t have a way to get them back? Even if you don’t want to outsource the bulk of your IT support or operations, it’s prudent to outsource disaster recovery.
Preparing for and executing a disaster recovery plan is beyond the scope of most small in-house IT teams. You’ll need specialists who help you recover your critical systems swiftly in the aftermath of a significant IT outage.
#5. Make Better Investments
An underrated benefit of partnering with a well-informed managed services provider is that you’ll get solid advice on choosing the most appropriate hardware and software solutions to meet the needs of your business.
Start-ups often assume they need the fanciest hardware or the most complex software and they acquire such investments at a high cost. Managed IT services can provide the advice you need to make the right investment. An MSP can cut through the noise and evaluate existing IT infrastructure to suggest the investments you actually need versus what would be nice to have.
#6. Not Getting Left Behind
Even if you or your co-foudners are adept with current processes, services and tools, IT, like any other aspect of technology, is a fast-paced and dynamic sector. It’s easy to become distracted by your core business idea and goals to the point where you get left behind in terms of the IT systems, tools, and processes that best support your company.
Outsourcing IT services as a start-up can provide an automated way of ensuring you don’t get left behind. Solid managed IT companies will stay on top of the latest trends, developments, and tools that streamline your IT processes. A well-informed managed services provider can give you invaluable advice about the current tools, hardware, and solutions that best suit the needs of your growing startup.
Closing Thoughts
Success as a start-up ultimately depends on achieving sustainable growth. Outsourcing IT services in the initial growth phase provides many benefits that can help support and achieve success for innovative companies, regardless of their industry.
If you are a co-founder at a start-up and you’d like some help with managing your IT services, contact us today to see what we can do to support your growth.