Why You Should Outsource IT Support in a Recession
Bear markets are often a sign of an impending recession period. You cannot completely foolproof your business from the eventualities of an economic downturn, but you can at least prepare for what’s coming. In fact, there’s no better place to start than outsourcing your IT support.
Here’s how outsourcing IT in a recession can benefit your business:
1. It’s a more cost-effective option.
When recession strikes and uncertainty reigns supreme, you have no option but to make the most of every penny at your disposal. Else, you risk running into cash flow problems when customers inevitably churn.
Outsourcing IT support gives you the leeway to cut down your spending for those tasks that don’t require full-time assistance. You only pay for what you absolutely need at any given time.
2. It allows for optimum operational efficiency
While unfortunate, workforce downsizing during a recession is almost always given. No business owner wants to bear the expense of an under-utilized team when the economy is spiraling out of control. You need your costs to be flexible.
Obviously, the biggest victims of any kind of downsizing are low-level employees. Since your business—like many other businesses—can’t fire valuable and experienced team members, you’ll inevitably have to lay off those that aren’t productive, including those in the IT department.
However, due to this inevitable trade-off, the low-value IT tasks start piling up, which eventually drives down your team’s productivity. Your most valuable members will find themselves handling those meager (but important) tasks and neglecting those that truly move the needle for your business. One of the best ways to prevent this scenario from happening is to outsource IT support to a proven, well-equipped provider even before the recession kicks in.
3. Employees get the benefits they deserve
If employees worry about one thing in a recession, it is the loss of certain benefits. While this situation is hardly advantageous to a business, it’s way more detrimental to an employee’s input and motivation. The last thing anyone wants in the middle of an economic downturn is to have their benefits revoked.
By outsourcing IT support needs to the right company, you can save up on the money you typically use to run that department and channel it to the remaining personnel instead. When employees realize that their benefits will remain untouched amid a recession, they’ll do everything in their capacity to keep the business afloat. Remember, a happy employee is a productive employee.
4. Ready access to a diversified pool of experts
A bear market and recession in general is a time to be extremely cautious of who you’re doing business with. There’s no room for laxity, and one minor mistake in your hiring endeavors could see your business sink into dangerous levels of unprofitability and stagnation. With that in mind, it pays to partner with a certified and prolific IT consultant. In other words, retain an MSP at your earliest opportunity.
When partnering with a Managed Service Provider, you’re hiring a team of experts that have a broad and extensive set of pooled experiences, certifications, and knowledge base of existing and upcoming technologies. You’re hiring top-level consultants who simply won’t sit by and watch your business tumble.
An experienced MSP can use their expertise to help formulate a tailored solution designed specifically to help your business weather the storm that’s synonymous with an economic downturn. Additionally, because MSPs are held accountable through Service Level Agreements (SLA), you can rest assured that they’ll utilize industry-best practices to establish proven workflows and processes, not mediocre ones. This translates to increased uptime for your business, as you’ll always be well-informed, well-advised, and well-positioned to respond to any uncertainties that may pop up along the way.
A good IT provider won’t just bring unparalleled expertise to your IT environment; they’ll also help you with a range of IT tasks, and at a predictable cost based on your current employee headcount. The best time to act was yesterday. The second-best time is today.
