itSynergy: Blog
5 Causes of Business Stress IT Management Defeats
Building out an internal IT team is stressful – possibly more draining than you realize.
Now, before you think this article is a sales pitch, know this –we actively tell businesses if they aren’t a good fit for our IT management services.
Instead, this is a guide that will help you determine if building an internal team is causing needless frustration for you and your employees.
5 Causes of Business Stress Building Internal IT Teams Creates
1. Hiring – and paying – qualified technicians
What’s your gameplan for vetting technical skillsets?
When you hire outside your background, it’s nearly impossible to know if someone is bluffing their way through an interview or if they possess the skillset to back up their claims.
The median IT salary was $51,670 higher than other occupations in May 2021.
According to the BLS, the median IT salary was $97,430 in May 2021. For all other occupations it was $45,760. Even other professionals, like accountants, have a lower median annual salary ($77,250).
That’s the salary for one employee.
No amount of talent, education, or determination will equip a single person to manage every aspect of your IT.
2. Fully supporting every employee
Who do you hire that can fully support every employee? Unless you’re a large enterprise (think over 500 employees) it will not be in your budget to hire for every position that will fully support your team, creating gaps and inefficiencies.
A general help desk technician can assist Erica, who needs a technician to determine why call forwarding to her cell phone stopped working.
But help desk can’t tell your CFO, Carlos, which laptop the company should purchase so he knows how much to set aside for next year’s IT budget.
3. Retaining a talented tech team
You know you need more than 1 employee, but cannot afford more than a 3-person IT team:
- Level 1 help desk
- System administrator or network engineer
- Highly skilled technician – like an information security analyst
Your help desk employee quickly burns out.
They’re responsible for fielding every support ticket and are quickly overwhelmed. Problems linger, causing company-wide productivity to nose-dive.
To remedy the problem, your other 2 technicians are pulled in to help because they don’t have enough work to fill 40 hours a week.
Highly skilled technicians quit.
IT veterans don’t want to field calls about computers that won’t connect to the WiFi. They spent years becoming industry experts and want to use their skillset. After a few weeks pulling help desk duty, they give notice that they’ve found a new job.
Your level 1 help desk person is overwhelmed, again, and will quickly quit if you don’t hire additional support.
Kolbe Corporation Spends Less Time Putting Out Fires and More Time on Revenue Generation
4. Managerial oversight of unfamiliar tasks and risk management
The problem of vetting technical skills is not relegated to the interview process. It continues in the day-to-day management of your IT team.
How will you know your staff is doing it the right way? Who will audit them?
Without oversight, you exponentially increase business risk because your IT team is not:
- Following the latest best practices
- Attending conferences to learn how to dismantle the latest cyberattacks
- Talking to, and learning from, industry peers
- Investing time in continuing education
This introduces cybersecurity concerns and leads to questions about security.
5. Maintaining a cybersafe environment for clients and employees
Remember how we said not having a full IT department creates gaps? Cybersecurity perfectly encapsulates this problem.
Level 1 help desk technicians cannot create a cybersafe operating environment for your team. But one cyber expert may be too much – like we said, they’ll probably end up helping with support tickets.
With no one watching your environment, or learning about how hackers deploy Zero Day attacks, you’re vulnerable to phishing, malware, and whatever new attack criminals dream up.
How Outsourcing IT Management Knocks Out Business Stress
1. Outsourced IT is a fraction of the cost of full-time employees
You have access to a full, on-call, IT department – all without having to go through the hiring process or make budget cuts to create competitive compensation packages for IT staff.
2. Access all levels of support, from help desk to strategic consultants
By working with an external IT firm, you gain uninterrupted access to a full suite of skillsets, from help desk all the way up to engineers with specialized knowledge.
3. It’s not your job to hire and retain employees
It’s your IT partner’s job to build a culture that attracts and retains top talent. Their IT experts administer in-depth technical interviews to validate skillsets.
4. Third-party accreditations vet companies for you
Instead of wondering how to vet technicians, or if your team follows best practices, you can rely on third-party accreditations to validate your IT partner. Look for an IT company that:
- Has current certifications or partnerships with major vendors (Microsoft, Dell, VMWare, etc.)
- Keeps a Certified Ethical Hacker on staff
- Participates in peer groups
- Attends industry conferences
5. Cybersecurity experts safeguard your organization
Peer groups, industry accreditations and conferences equip cyber experts with a powerful set of tools that they deploy to defend your organization.
You can confidently assure clients, vendors, and staff that you take every measure available to secure their data.
Make Anything Tech-Related Our Problem – Not Yours
From providing help desk support to strategic advice, we are here for every member of your team. If you have internal IT already, we’ll work with them – not replace them.
Why you can trust our IT and business guidance:
- Founder owned and operated for 25+ years
- We tell companies if they aren’t a good fit for our services
- Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) on staff
- Led by an owner whose services have been retained by both Microsoft and Cisco as a subject matter expert
Book a Consultation and Eliminate Stress – It’s That Simple
