Every company that aspires towards success heavily leverages technology and all its forms to help it grow. More often than not, this means building a strong and robust in-house IT team to handle everything from basic troubleshooting to providing network IT solutions.
While this is the ideal way to go, it also costs a lot of money to pull off. Sadly, not everyone can afford to invest in an IT team of their own. Fortunately, there are many outsource options when it comes to IT. Here are five things that you need to look out for to ensure that you’re hiring the best team available.
Capacity
The first thing that you need to look for in a potential outsourced IT team to hire is whether or not their team is a match to the size and needs of your specific organization. This matching will ensure that everyone’s needs are met as they arise without compromising the quality of work that your company needs to push out. Capacity also has to do with the availability to meet regular demands like maintenance or monitoring all the way to special cases such as installations and replacements.
Expertise
Hand in hand with capacity should be consideration of the level of expertise of the outsourced IT team that you’re looking to hire. Apart from ascertaining what they’re capable of doing at the moment, it’s also important to check whether they are open continuous learning.
Technology, after all, isn’t something static and unchanging. Rather, it’s something that continuously evolves and changes. A great outsourced IT team will be on the pulse of the trends and updates in technology that will benefit your business.
Proximity
By definition, an outsourced IT team isn’t going to be housed and headquartered in your building. That’s fine so long as they’re within reach of your business. It won’t do to have someone who’s an expert at everything from network IT solutions to maintenance who can’t reach your offices the moment that you need them.
That’s because a lot of IT problems are time critical wherein any delays can mean the difference between success and failure. So long as your outsourced IT team can make it within an hour, you should be good.
Reliability
Next, you should be sure you’re hiring a team with a proven track record of being reliable. Many have been burned by outsourced IT teams that talk the talk but fail miserably at walking the walk.
The best way to gauge whether or not you’re hiring a reliable team it to check their reviews. Do people gush about how dependable they are? Or are complaints aplenty about how difficult they are to work with?
You get what you pay for when talking about outsourced IT. While, understandably, you don’t want to pay too much that it bankrupts you, you also don’t want to be cheap.
IT services often form the backbone of any business, and you never want to be left out in the cold without a paddle to save you. Negotiate and find a balance and both you and your outsourced IT team are sure to be happy.
