Just read an articlefrom David Bellini, the President of Connectwise, that discussed outsourcing the help desk if you are an IT provider. He mentioned some benefits and also outlined the reasons why he keeps it internal.
I agree with the internal point of view for eMonarch. We staff our own help desk, we offer our own backup service, we provide hosted Exchange,Sharepoint, OCS, and even soon MS CRM. Why? Because I do not want to be like every other IT provider out there just reselling other peoples stuff. eMonarch is an IT Provider not an IT Reseller.
Could eMonarch make more money in the short term if we just resold all these other services? Oh you bet! But I think they are just short term gains. Instead I believe the long term strategy for eMonarch is to innovate our own solutions for customers and to be the provider of those services where we can.
But perhaps one of the most important part of what David mentioned in the article is the discussion around relationship. Small Business customers want to talk to someone they know. They want to be able and come see your team if they wanted to. Even with our remote backup service, I can say to my clients "You are more than welcome to come see where your data is being kept safe at". Now to be honest are they likely to take me up on that offer, no. But often times it is the fact that the option exists.
So in the end, outsourcing makes sense for some things. But I go back to an earlier post on this topic and I feel that outsourcing your core business is a bad idea.
But the real question many should ask is "What is your core business". Find that out and it makes determining what to keep internal vs. external a lot easier discussion.
Comments