Is Your Startup Ready to Outsource its IT Support?

Startups are fascinating

I’m a huge fan of businesses that tackle complex problems with a fresh outlook. Every year seemingly small enterprises take the tech industry by storm and experience large-scale internal growth. For 2017 I’m particularly looking forward to the seeing the success of Zipline, a drone delivery service for medical supplies and HouseParty, a video chat app for smartphones.

Unfortunately, this rapid growth can have a negative impact on a startups financial solvency if their expansion is not managed properly. Often, customer service can fail when there is not enough staff to respond to an increased demand for customer support. Additionally, rapid growth can lead to a high employee turnover rate as staff respond differently to internal changes. The last thing a growing startup wants to worry about is technical issues.

Can I support my own IT in house?

Supporting your IT in-house was feasible in the early stages of your business plan. However, as your company begins to grow, handling your own IT support can be time-consuming, frustrating and most importantly, expensive.

It can become very costly to maintain your IT systems and keep them up to date. Many startups fail to account for the expense of IT repair but how willing are you to risk encountering a critical technical issue? Additionally, in a period of large-scale growth, small businesses should be focusing on generating revenue instead of spending time training technical staff or attempting IT services themselves in-house.

One potential solution is to hire an in-house IT manager, however with average salary expectations of over £30-40k per year this is not a practical solution for a startup. If a startup is experiencing growth and does not have the resources to invest in their own in-house IT support then it is time for them to start outsourcing their IT Support.

IT support for startups

Firstly, because in-house IT support staff are isolated to one workplace, many believe they will fail to address wider trends when providing IT solutions. On the other hand, outsourced IT support staff have experience dealing with multiple clients from varied company sizes, therefore they are able to use their wider knowledge and experience to implement the most up-to-date solutions.

Secondly, as we touched on earlier, the luxury of in-house IT support for startups is way above the budget of most growing businesses; this is even before we factor in the cost of recruitment, holidays, training and additional company benefits.

Without either an in-house IT manager or outsourced IT support staff, a startup is at risk of inducing huge unexpected costs to their business. In the event of technical downtime your business will have to rely on their own internal staff to solve IT issues. However without any technical expertise, this will cause a huge loss of productivity.

So is your startup ready to start outsourcing its IT Support?

Yes, as startups grow they will encounter many obstacles; don’t let technical issues be one of them. Give yourself peace of mind and don’t let your businesses growth be slowed down by downtime. Southbank-IT offers bespoke IT solutions tailored to your company’s size and requirements.

If you can’t fit an in-house IT manager’s salary into your budget then your startup is ready to start outsourcing its IT support. Give Southbank-IT a call on 020 7036 3830 or click here to find out more about what we offer.