Cost Comparison: IT Staff vs Domestic IT Outsourcing

Providing for your business needs takes planning and consistent evaluation. Evaluating and re-evaluating IT budgets is a frequent conversation we have with our clients and we have become well-versed with what type of IT budget planning will work for specific business types. Technology is the foundation of your business and the return on investment (ROI) of your technology – like hardware, software, IT Projects, IT Consulting, business services and yes, human resources – is regularly at the mercy of the market. Here is what you must ask yourself as an SMB in today’s environment of advanced Cloud Technology and XaaS (everything as a service):

What’s the ROI on your technology resources? How does one begin to measure the return on an investment in technology for business where factors like IT Help Desk support, Server maintenance, IT security, expertise, and availability are concerned? Does your staff have access to the knowledge in order to access all the factors available to make the most informed decision?

To help make the determination of ROI, we put together the top considerations when making the decision to either hire an in-house IT Professional or partner with a Managed Services Provider.

Let’s start with the cost/benefit consideration on both sides. Company parameters: 50 employees, 3 locations within the US, 50 workstations, 1TB of critical data, 2 physical servers and basic software needs. 

What your basic business technology needs include:

• IT support – onsite or remote
• Server maintenance/management – workstation protection, server monitoring and alerting, firewall management (updates and backups), managed backup and disaster recovery
• Managed Cloud Services – fully-hosted managed solution and hosted exchange
• Managed Cloud Backup – fully-hosted backup solution, monitored for data integrity
• IT Consulting – providing strategic IT management, coordination of IT vendors, technology to support future growth projections and quarterly business reports (QBR’s) 

Cost considerations of in-house IT Professional:

• Base Salary
• Benefits (vacation/PTO/holidays/medical)
• Knowledge gap
• Downtime potential
• 4% admin cost
• 25% turnover rate
• 20% unproductive rate

Here is a detailed assessment of ALL cost considerations of hiring IT staff – Download Our IT Employee Cost Calculator 

Cost considerations of outsourced IT (Denver market)

• Monthly rate – Fully managed IT service and support
• IT projects and IT consulting