As a small or midsized business owner, you probably already know whether your company or industry is tilting towards an economic slowdown this year. You probably have already begun to sharpen your pencils to look at what cuts can be made, and how to start stockpiling cash into reserves to survive months that miss projected revenue. One area to cut with care is technology spending and maintenance. An erroneous cut in your technology budget could lead to a huge loss if your network goes down and your staff cannot work. Business owners principally rely on technology professionals, like IT Managers or Consultants, to provide advice in order to make their decisions on what to cut.

However, Are You Getting The Best Advice?

The reason you should ask this question is because many IT Manager came from an enterprise level company and was trained to provide enterprise level advice and solutions that are often two or three times more costly than necessary for small and midsized businesses. Small and midsized businesses need to evaluate their actual requirements, based upon their business plan and goals, and only invest in technology that provides important added value in the form of increasing stability or efficiency.

Tips on Managing IT for Small & Midsized Business in an Economic Downturn

Here are tips to help small and midsized businesses make the best choices when looking at managing their IT budgets in an economic downturn.

1. Outsourcing Internal IT. If your business employs fewer than 100 employees, it makes little economic sense to employ internal IT employees. Employee costs are probably the largest overhead expense in your company’s budget, including salaries and benefits. If you outsource your IT services to a local professional IT outsourcing firm, you only pay for what you need and don’t pay benefits.

Another benefit of outsourcing your company’s IT is that you are hiring a company with a full staff of engineers specializing in most IT areas. If you have or had internal IT staff, you probably have already paid IT consultants to come in as contractors to help your internal staff with technology issues beyond their expertise. By selecting the correct IT outsourcing firm, you eliminate double-paying for internal IT staff and specialized consultants.

Prior to selecting an outsourced IT company, you should always ask whether the IT business primarily uses employee engineers or contractor engineers. Contractors come and go quickly, and can frustrate your desire for a stable IT team that knows your company’s network. There is always some turn over among outsourced IT consulting firms, however, it is nothing compared to firms that primarily use contractors.

Additionally, ensure that the IT company you hire can provide you with:

• An issue ticketing system
• Emergency 24/7 support
• A toll-free number in the event your network goes down and the Internet is unavailable.
• Remote monitoring and support.

Finally, ask your IT outsource provider whether they have engineers who are local (within 20 miles) to your physical location to cut down on time to travel onsite when only onsite service will solve

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