With the current financial climate causing businesses to continue to look for ways of keeping costs down, there has never been a better time to consider the benefits of outsourcing IT.Many businesses keep IT in-house, overlooking the numerous advantages that external IT support providers can bring to a company.

While big firms can afford to maintain large teams of in-house IT experts, the same cannot be said for SMEs, who often have just one or two IT staff. But these smaller companies could reap rewards by utilising the manpower and expertise of specialist IT support companies.The most obvious benefit of using an external provider is cost. A survey published in Computer Weekly in May found that the average salary for an IT professional is £34,217.

But if a company engages an external IT support provider, they can secure a comprehensive service at a fraction of that sum.There are many other benefits of using external IT support specialists. If an SME employs one IT specialist, that person can only complete one task at a time. Specialist IT support providers, however, have whole teams that can service a company’s IT needs at any time.And what happens if two IT systems, fundamental to the operation of a business – for example, a stock ordering system and an e-mail system – go down at the same time? Any downtime costs a company money. If a business has one in-house IT specialist available, each problem must be dealt with in turn.

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