Employee support
Answering when someone is stuck, from a forgotten password to a workstation that will not start. Half the volume, and the half that shows.
Hire or outsource
Outsourced IT department for Quebec small businesses
The question always arrives the same way: someone on the team handles IT on top of their real job, it no longer holds, and a decision has to be made. Hire, or hand the department outside. This page sets out the six roles an IT department actually fills, compares the two options without cheating, and explains the mixed model many companies choose past a certain size.
An outsourced IT department hands an outside company the six roles of an IT team: employee support, monitoring and upkeep, security and compliance, backups, projects and planning. You pay a predictable monthly amount instead of a salary, and a team replaces one person.
The six roles
What an IT department actually does
Before deciding who carries them, you have to know what there is to carry. These six roles exist whether you name them or not: today, someone at your place is doing them halfway, between two other tasks.
Monitoring and upkeep
Watching workstations and servers continuously, applying patches, replacing a disk before it fails. The part nobody notices when it is done well.
Security and compliance
Accounts, access, multi-factor, email protection, incident register, Law 25 obligations. A watch that does not stop.
Backup and recovery
Backing up, proving it with a test restore, and knowing how long a return to service takes. A backup never restored is not a backup.
Projects
Migration, a new office, fleet renewal, rolling out a line-of-business application. Whatever lasts longer than a ticket.
Planning
Knowing what is reaching end of life, what has to be budgeted, and in what order. The part small teams sacrifice first, for lack of time.
The role that goes first. It is always planning. Nothing urgent is attached to it, so it waits. Two years later the fleet has aged all at once, and the invoice arrives with the outage.
The decision
Hiring or outsourcing, compared honestly
Both hold up, and we will tell you plainly when hiring is the right call for you.
Hiring in house
What it gives. Daily presence, deep knowledge of your specifics, someone who walks over when needed.
What it really costs. A salary, benefits, ongoing training. One person covers neither vacation, nor sick days, nor evenings, and their departure often takes the memory of your decisions. Keeping up with cybersecurity alone is hard, and all six roles above rest on the same head.
Who it suits. An organisation large enough to keep the person busy full time and absorb their absence.
Outsourcing the department
What it gives. A team rather than a person, continuous coverage, and the six roles carried by different people. A predictable monthly expense.
What it really costs. A monthly commitment, including quiet months. You accept processes that are not your own, and the provider will never know your people as well as a colleague would.
Who it suits. Most businesses of 5 to 100 employees, especially those whose operations stop when IT stops.
The calculation to make. Do not compare a salary to a monthly plan. Compare over three years, including benefits, training, uncovered periods, and the cost of the downtime you lived through last year. Here is what makes up the price of a plan.
What is covered
What the outsourced department takes on
The six roles are carried by different people, which removes the single point of failure that one person is.
- The support line for your employees, during the hours you work
- Continuous monitoring of workstations and servers, and patching
- Cybersecurity, access management and Law 25 groundwork
- Backups, proven with a test restore
- Planned projects, quoted separately from the plan
- Budget planning for the next twelve to thirty-six months
What stays yours, always. Your administrator accounts, your domain name, your licences and the documentation of your environment. You take them with you if you leave.
The third model
Already have someone? The mixed model exists
Outsourcing does not mean replacing your person. Many companies keep both, and past a certain size it is often the better arrangement.
What your internal person keeps
Business applications, daily work, the relationship with your employees, and knowledge of your specifics. That is what an outsider will never match.
What the provider covers
Security, continuous monitoring, servers, patching, and vacation or sick periods. That is what one person cannot hold alone.
We call that co-managed IT. Here is how co-managed IT is structured, and what vCIO support adds on the planning side.
Questions and answers
Frequently asked questions about an outsourced IT department
What is an outsourced IT department?
It means handing an outside company all the roles an internal IT team would fill: employee support, monitoring, security, backups, projects and planning. You pay a known monthly amount instead of one or more salaries.
At what size do we need an IT department?
The question is not headcount, it is what happens when IT stops. A ten-person company whose entire billing runs through one application needs continuous coverage more than a forty-person one whose IT is mostly email.
Is it cheaper than hiring?
For most small businesses, yes, but the honest comparison is not only about salary. An in-house hire also costs benefits and training, and covers neither vacation, nor sick days, nor evenings. Compare over three years.
Can we still keep someone in house?
Yes, and past a certain size it is often the best model. The internal person handles business applications and daily work, the provider covers security, monitoring, servers and vacation periods. We call that co-managed IT.
Who holds our access if we outsource?
You do. The administrator accounts for your systems stay in your name, with at least one break-glass account only you control, and the documentation of your environment belongs to you. If a provider holds your accounts in your place, fix that before anything else.
Run the numbers with us
Give us your workstation count, your working hours and what cost you time last year. We cost both options over three years, and we tell you plainly if hiring would make more sense in your case.