Somewhere between about fifteen and fifty users, most organisations face the same question. Do we hire somebody to look after the technology, or do we hand it to a company that does it for other people too?
It is usually argued as a cost comparison. Cost matters, but it is the least interesting part of the difference.
Cover is the first real difference
One person cannot cover holidays, illness, a training course or a resignation. When your only technical person is away, the organisation waits.
An outsourced arrangement spreads the cover across a team. That is the main thing you are buying, and it is worth more than it looks on the day everything is working.
Breadth is the second
Technology has become too wide for one person to know well. Identity and accounts, devices, networking, cloud platforms, backup, security and the particular application your organisation runs on are all separate bodies of knowledge.
A good in-house person will be strong in two or three of those and will manage the rest. A team will normally have somebody who is strong in each. Where an in-house person wins is depth in your own systems, because they use them every day.
The shape of the cost, not the size
A salary is a fixed cost that does not move when your requirements do. An outsourced arrangement is usually a monthly figure tied to a user and device count, so it moves when you grow or shrink.
Against the salary you should also set recruitment, training, holiday cover, software tools and the equipment that person needs. Against the outsourced figure you should set the fact that nobody is sitting in your office absorbing small questions all day.
What you lose by outsourcing
This is worth saying plainly. You lose the person who notices things in passing, who knows which member of staff needs help before they ask, and who can be pulled into a meeting at short notice.
Good providers replace part of that with regular reviews and by keeping the same engineers on your account. They do not replace all of it, and any provider who says otherwise is overselling.
What you lose by hiring
You lose the second opinion. A single technical person has nobody to check their design decisions, and those decisions tend to stay in place for years.
You also inherit a knowledge risk. If the arrangement is not documented, it leaves when they do.
The arrangement most organisations end up with
Past roughly fifty users, the common answer is both. An internal person owns the relationship with staff, the day to day requests and the priorities. A provider covers the specialist work, the out of hours cover, the projects and the second opinion.
That split works because it gives each side the part it is better at. It also removes the single point of failure without removing the person who knows your organisation.
How to decide this year
- Write down what happened the last three times something broke, and how long it took.
- Work out how many hours a week are currently going into technology, including hours from people whose job it is not.
- Decide what you want to be true in two years: fewer problems, faster answers, lower cost, or better planning. They are different goals.
- Ask for both quotes, and compare what is inside them rather than the totals.
Writing the job description, if you decide to hire
If the answer is to hire, the description you write decides whether the role works. Most internal IT roles are written as a list of technologies, which attracts somebody who wants to work on technology rather than somebody who wants to make an organisation run.
Four things belong in it, and one thing does not.
Who they report to, and who approves spending. An internal IT person without a budget route becomes a person who asks for things and is told no. Name the person who signs off hardware and licences, and give the role a small discretionary limit so a failed keyboard does not need a meeting.
What is theirs and what is not. Be explicit about the parts you intend to keep outside: the firewall, the backups, the website, the line of business application. A role with unclear edges turns into a role that is blamed for everything electrical in the building.
How much of the week is planned work. If the answer is none, you have written a helpdesk role and should say so. A role that is entirely reactive will not improve anything, and the person who takes it will leave within two years having fixed the same problems repeatedly.
What cover exists when they are away. This is the question good candidates ask and weak descriptions ignore. Saying honestly that a provider covers holidays and specialist work makes the role more attractive, not less, because it means they are not on call for the rest of their life.
What does not belong: a list of twenty technologies. Nobody is strong in all of them and asking implies you do not know which two matter to you. Name the environment you actually run, say which areas matter most, and describe the rest as things they will manage rather than operate.
One more practical point. Whoever you hire will document nothing unless documentation is part of the job and is reviewed. Put it in the description, ask for it in the first three months, and check it. A role that leaves no written record behind it is a role that has to be recruited twice.
Where to read more
Our managed IT and outsourced IT page sets out what we take responsibility for and what stays with you. If you already have an internal person, we work alongside them rather than replacing them, which is covered on the IT support page.
Tell us how technology is looked after today and we will say which of the three arrangements we would recommend, including when the answer is to hire.