IT Support Options for Small Businesses

An Easy Guide to Making a Hard Decision 

You know your small business needs IT support, but you might not know where to start. This guide is for you.

Whether you are concerned about cybersecurity, work-from-home productivity, network management, cloud migration, collaboration, VoIP phone systems, hackers, online business transactions, or connecting with customer online, we are here to help.

Small businesses have three basic options for IT services: 

1. In-house IT support.
2. Outsourced, fully-managed IT support via a Managed Service Provider (MSP).
3. A Co-managed IT arrangement (a combination of in-house and outsourced support).

Each of these three options have distinct advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a quick look at each one. 

Option 1: In-house IT support

There is a clear advantage to having an employee on-site, every day. In-house IT employees have the opportunity to learn the specific ins and outs of your business and become familiar with the places where the tech gremlins tend to hide. 

A typical one-man band IT employee costs between $55,000 to $70,000/year. They can integrate into your team and learn the nuances of your particular IT setup while giving your management team maximum control. However, for small- to medium-sized businesses in particular, this also presents several problems. 

In a perfect world you could easily find an individual employee that can manage your servers, provide help desk support, install, upgrade, and troubleshoot all of your business’s diverse software, work nights and weekends, maintain your network, and ensure cybersecurity for all of your employees. However, back here on planet Earth, that is a big ask for any single human being—more like hunting a unicorn. To be realistic, what you actually want is not one IT employee, but a small IT department, which will cost far more than the number above. 

An IT department should also be managed by someone with at least some knowledge of IT issues – at least enough to ensure that the company stays on track with cybersecurity, updates, and technology upgrades. That IT department will also need to procure all of the hardware and software necessary to keep your business running. That means all of the costs of management, operation, and infrastructure will fall squarely on the shoulders of the business, adding operational and capital expenses to your business.

Option 2: Outsourced, Fully-managed Support through a Managed Service Provider (MSP) 

For many small businesses, outsourcing has become an increasingly popular option for specialized services such as accounting, marketing, and IT. In a 2019 survey of outsourcing practices amongst businesses with annual revenue less than $50 million, IT topped the list. 37% of small businesses responded that they were currently contracting third-party IT support. 

This trend amongst SMBs should not be surprising. IT expenditures represent an outsized proportion of a small business’s budget. Economies of scale favor larger enterprises in this domain; an average SMB spends nearly 7% of their total budget on IT, compared to only 3% for large businesses. Even then, more than half of SMBs feel that they are still spending too little on tech support. 

Managed service providers (MSP) can often provide a far greater ROI than an in-house IT department. A good MSP will far exceed the capacity of any in-house employee or small department with a significantly lower monthly spend.

How?

A good IT service provider employees a complete team of experts that ensure thorough maintenance and support for all IT need: cybersecurity, software, networking, VoIP, hardware, cloud, compliance, and much more. 

Beyond a team of experts, MSPs also provide a number of other benefits over a single in-house technician, including 24/7 support, improved cybersecurity, proactive maintenance and updates, and stable operational expenses.

For many small businesses, that last point is a big one. MSPs provide SMBs the opportunity to bundle all of their significant employee expenses and unpredictable capital expenses for hardware and software into one single, predictable monthly line item.

MSPs can do this by incorporating hardware-as-a-service (HAAS) into their offerings. Practically, this means that an MSP leases the hardware to a company, updating it and maintaining it as a part of their monthly bill. They just pay their bill and the MSP makes sure they have the hardware and support that they need. 

An MSP’s can potentially cover all of business’s IT and IT-adjacent needs: service from a team of experts, VoIP phone systems and service, internet service, software and hardware, networking, cloud storage, cybersecurity, and 24/7 support. 

These benefits expand even further when a business enters a long-term partnership with a capable MSP. Long-term partnerships allow MSPs to form a core part of a business team, which allows them to: 

• Prepare an IT strategic plan
• learn the most common IT struggles of an individual business 
• maintain and upgrade an IT infrastructure gradually and sustainably 
• identify areas of vulnerability
• suggest opportunities for a business to grow their bottom-line using tech.

Option 3: Co-managed IT Support 

Here’s the simple equation for understanding co-managed IT support: 

MSP + In-house IT employee(s) = Co-managed IT Support 

A co-managed IT arrangement hits the sweet spot between expert support and internal control for many businesses. Co-managed support draws on the strengths of each option to provide robust support relationship between in-house and outsourced IT. The obvious downside is that in order to gain the benefits of both types of resource, they must also budget for both types of resources.

However, co-managed solutions are often the best, and most cost-effective choice in a specific, but common scenario: a growing business with a competent, but overextended IT technician or small IT team.  

In these situations, a co-management relationship with an MSP can help provide specific, ongoing support in the areas that a in-house technician or small team most need relief, for less than it would cost to contract an additional employee.

Much like other technical fields such as healthcare, engineering, or accounting, IT has a variety of sub-specialties – and expertise in one area may not translate into functional knowledge in another. Though an electrical engineer might technically be able to design a bridge—you would probably feel better driving over a bridge designed and built by a civil engineer. 

Co-management support from an MSP can provide:

• 24/7 help desk support 
• Cloud, VoIP, networking, or other specific expert support 
• Complex IT project execution
• System-wide overhaul support
• IT strategy development 
• Cybersecurity and risk management 
• Best practices and compliance management 

In the IT world, cybersecurity and compliance are two areas in particular can have an outsized impact on an organization when they are not managed well. Ransomware, phishing attacks, and data security are now concerns for businesses of all sizes now, with small businesses now at increased risk compared to larger businesses. Likewise, small businesses with compliance requirements related to healthcare, consumer protection, government data, or financial records need to remain vigilant with their digital practices to ensure positive results in an audit. 

By contracting an MSP for co-managed support, businesses can strengthen their IT staff, plan better for the future, and keep valuable expertise on tap for delicate IT needs. 

Making the Decision 

When a business reaches 10 employees, they should consider contracting some sort of part-time IT support. Long before a business reaches 40 employees, we recommend that an SME implements some form of full-time tech support. In order to determine which option might work best for your business, consider the following factors, which will be unique to each individual business.