When looking to hire either a team or outsourcing your IT support there are many advantages and disadvantages. Depending on your company, your goals and your expectations, not one size will fit everyone.
Earlier this week we covered the advantages and disadvantages of hiring an in-house team and we have also covered the advantages of outsourcing your IT support. If you are interested in reading those stick around to the end of the article.
At Firewall Technical we like to provide you with all of the information needed to make an informed decision. In this article, we will take a look at some of the disadvantages of outsourcing your IT support.
What are the cons of outsourcing your IT Support?
- You lose some control.
- You may not understand your service level agreement (SLA).
- There can be security risks.
- Long contracts can lock you in.
- Can be slower depending on your SLA.
- Problems can be lost in translation.
Outsourcing your tech support leads to you losing some control.
If you were to hire an in-house IT support team you would be able to micromanage that team until they were running up to standard in a way in which you would expect them to run. Outsourcing your IT support takes this level of control away from you and to some businesses, this may not be ideal.
With that said this could also be a positive as many businesses just want their tech to work and don’t care how it does work as long as it does. Micromanaging a tech team to some business owners is an unwanted distraction, so this disadvantage depends on your preferences.
You may not understand your service level agreement (SLA.)
Your service level agreement or SLA is an agreement written up that shows you everything that you are paying for and what is not covered in the scope of the agreement. This can show you exactly what is covered so you know how much money you need to budget every month for your tech support. This stops there from being any hidden fees, but if you don’t understand your SLA then you could be in trouble.
If you don’t understand your SLA, don’t sign it. Ask your tech support team to go through it with you, otherwise, there will be hidden costs and that takes away one of the main advantages of outsourcing your tech support.
Outsourcing can lead to security risks.
Outsourcing often means that data has to leave your business and go to another. If you hire a tech support team that doesn’t understand the importance of keeping data safe then you could be breaching the laws in your country which could lead to hefty fines.
Hiring an IT support company that understands the importance of data protection laws and any other laws that may concern your business is going to mitigate this risk, however, outsourcing to an overseas company that’s cheaper may cause problems.
Beware of long contracts.
Long contracts can be a disadvantage of outsourcing your IT support as you have no control over the quality of work carried out and the time taken to fix any issues that occur. If you were sold on a better service than is provided and you are locked into a long contract this can cost your business money.
A service level agreement should mitigate these risks so make sure you are happy with the terms within them. If your SLA isn’t being met you can terminate that contract early. For this reason, it’s very important to understand your SLA.
Outsourcing your IT support can be slower than having an in-house team.
Once again it’s important to check your service level agreement to see what the typical support times are and the expected time it will take to solve your problems. Having an in-house team will be a quicker solution so you will need to make sure that the time taken for an outsourced team won’t cost your business too much.
It could be the case of you will need to pay a higher cost for quicker support times. Check your SLA and discuss this with your IT support company to see if anything can be done to increase your support speed.
Problems are lost in translation.
If you do choose to outsource your IT support to a different country you could have problems with translation. Communicating back and forth where translation problems occur can lead to slower response times or the problem going unfixed.
We don’t recommend outsourcing your IT to a different county for this exact reason. If you do go for outsourcing keep it in your own country so your problems can be discussed with native speakers.
Should you outsource your IT services?
Deciding whether to outsource your IT support or keep it in-house will depend on your company and your circumstances. In this article, we covered the disadvantages of outsourcing your IT. Now that you know of the disadvantages you may want to check out the following articles to give you a more rounded answer.
Related articles
Advantages of keeping your IT support in house.