With small businesses and companies, a lot of the network jobs and IT work can be done by the few people running the shop. It’s generally not too much more difficult than making sure you have a working router and everyone knows their e-mail address. However, when companies expand, IT technicalities grow exponentially.
To combat this increase in complexity, it often makes sense to outsource your IT work to local consulting companies, or at least ones that are available through online resources to check all of your Internet data. If you’re not sure if it’s time for this kind of help, think about the following five topics.
Know Who Your Local Experts Are
Before you just start throwing darts at a board to find out who to hire to do your IT consulting work, consider that local IT experts are often available in your area, especially if you live in a larger city. With local companies, you can potentially even talk face to face with the outsourced departments, which can increase the value of the experience overall. Look for local reviews from customers as well to get a general idea of the depth of expertise the company has.
Wasting Time With Topics You Don’t Know
One of the easiest ways to tell if you need to hire some tech experts is if you know for a fact that you’re wasting your time trying to learn about IT instead of doing what you’re good at and making money for your company. The minute you get on the wrong side of that boundary, it’s time to make the phone call. If you’re spending hours scanning through IT tutorials, perhaps your time would be better spent doing something you’re already good at.
Are You Losing Money Because of Unfamiliarity?
If you’re losing money because of unfamiliarity with networking, routers, IP addresses, and other IT tasks, that’s another time you know it’s appropriate to call the experts who are just waiting for your phone call or e-mail. You can potentially even get a free estimate about how much it would cost to get different services started.
Do Your Competitors Have IT Consultants?
How about your immediate competitors? Are they using IT consultants? If they are, is it giving them a competitive advantage? Simply by going through this cost-benefit process in your mind, you should be able to make the appropriate decision about your own company’s pathway.
Is Your Business Model Slower Than You Are?
If you feel like your business IT functionality is slowing down your work efficiency, that’s another indication that it should be high on your priority to get this fixed. Time is money, and money is all about efficiency!