Managed IT Services vs In-House IT for Multi-Site Businesses

Managed IT services vs in-house IT is a choice about who does the IT work at each of a firm’s sites. With in-house IT, the firm’s own staff do that work. With managed IT services, the firm agrees with an outside provider which parts of it the provider’s staff carry out. A third route splits the jobs between the two. For a firm with several sites, the difference shows up in a few jobs that come back at each location. It also shows up in what the firm keeps hold of, whoever does them. Signisys sets out the wider aim of keeping IT alike across a firm’s locations on a separate page.

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT: Who Does the Work at Each Site

Under the in-house route, the firm employs the people who answer staff, look after devices and sign-ins, and travel to sites. They know the sites, and they know the people at each one by name. When a question comes up, they can walk across to the person who decides.

Under managed IT services, the firm agrees with an outside provider which IT work the provider’s staff carry out. The two sides also agree which sites and which hours that covers. After that, the provider’s staff do the work, while the firm keeps the decisions it has not handed over.

In a split, the firm keeps some jobs with its own staff and gives others to a provider. For example, its own team may keep sign-ins while a provider’s staff visit the far sites.

There is one more choice underneath all three. A firm with several sites can run IT from one place, as centralized IT, or let each site run its own. In what follows, the firm runs IT from one place, whoever does the work. What happens when each site goes its own way instead is traced in how branch setups drift apart from the first week.

A firm can run either route well or badly. We compare the routes by where the work sits, and we rank neither of them.

The Work That Repeats at Each Site

Signisys uses six site jobs as its own working method for this choice. They are the work that comes back at each site, whoever carries it out.

1. Answering staff when something at the site stops working.
2. Going to the site in person when a fix needs hands.
3. Keeping each site on the firm’s written setup for devices and settings.
4. Opening sign-ins for new staff and closing them when someone leaves.
5. Keeping each site’s record and the record of changes.
6. Setting up a new or moved site.

Each job also has a moment when someone at the site notices it going wrong. For example, a site manager notices a missing sign-in on a new starter’s first day. Likewise, a shop or clinic team notices when a printer stays broken for a week.

However, some IT work sits above these six jobs. Strategy and the choice of systems belong to the firm’s leadership under both routes, and this comparison leaves them out. Here, the question is narrower: who carries out each of the six jobs, and which person in the firm answers for it.

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT Across Six Site Jobs

The table sets managed IT services vs in-house IT side by side for each of the six jobs. In each row, the firm’s own staff do the job in the middle column, and the provider’s staff do it on the right.

In both columns, someone in the firm still decides. What changes is who carries out the work.

Getting Someone to a Site That Has a Problem

Reach to the sites is a job that changes as the firm adds sites. An own team based at one site covers the others by travel. Otherwise, a team member talks a site person through the fix on a call.

Likewise, a provider is in the same position at sites where it has no people nearby. Its staff also travel there, or talk someone through the fix. A firm comparing multi-site managed IT services asks where the provider has people. Staff at a distant desk can answer calls but not go to the site. What slows a first-line desk down, whoever staffs it, is traced in the reasons requests for IT help wait so long.

Under either route, a person at each site who can follow instructions on a call helps. That person needs some time and a willingness to try.

The IT lead can also list each site beside the nearest person who can go there under each route. If a site has no one in either column, that gap is worth settling first.

Remote help, though, depends on the site being reachable from outside. That rests on the network lines joining the sites, which is separate work.

What the Firm Keeps in Its Own Name

The firm keeps four items whichever route it takes. First come the top-level administrator sign-ins for its systems, in the firm’s name, while the provider’s staff get named accounts of their own. Next is the written setup for its sites. A copy of each site’s record and of the change record comes third, one the firm can open without the provider. Last is the decision to open, move or close a site.

The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security covers this ground in a Canadian government note on working with outside IT providers. It describes reducing the risks of using a provider as a responsibility shared between the organization and the provider. But it adds that “organizations are ultimately responsible for protecting their systems”. It also advises against giving a provider the firm’s logins, or access to systems the provider has no need to reach.

The note is dated 3 April 2017 and was last modified on 11 October 2018, and the IT lead uses it for one point only: handing over the work does not hand over the responsibility. The wider exposure when a provider holds logins is itemised in seven risks that follow when an outsider has a route into your systems.

Handing Site Work to an Outside Team

Here is what changes for the firm when it hands site work to a provider, set out as three gains and three drawbacks.

Read the other way, the same six lines describe keeping the work in-house. There, the firm’s own staff keep day-to-day knowledge of the sites, while the IT lead decides without waiting on a second party. We rank neither side.

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT: Splitting the Jobs

In this Signisys working method, the split goes job by job. First, the firm writes each of the six jobs on its own line and marks it Own, Outside or Shared. Then, beside each job, it writes one name: the staff member who answers for that job, whoever carries it out. A job marked Outside still gets a name from inside the firm.

Shared means both at once. The provider’s staff carry out the work, and the named person in the firm approves it.

Some jobs lean one way. The IT lead can keep a job that depends on close knowledge of the firm’s people, such as sign-ins, as Own or Shared. For a job that depends on people in several places at once, such as going to sites, the IT lead can weigh a provider’s reach.

Seen this way, managed IT services vs in-house IT turns into six smaller choices rather than one large one. The split belongs to the firm, and it is where the firm’s own discussion begins. We offer no right answer here.

A Veterinary Group Draws Its Line

Take an imaginary group of veterinary clinics in the GCC. It has had no dealings with Signisys. The group has clinics in three cities and a small central office, where one IT person works.

First, the IT person keeps the sign-ins and the written setup as Own. In this example, receptionists and vets at each clinic change, and the IT person is the one who knows who is who.

Visits to clinics in the two far cities go Outside, to a provider with people in those cities. Even so, the IT person still visits the clinic in the home city, which sits close to the central office.

Answering staff becomes Shared. The provider’s staff take calls out of hours, while the IT person takes them during the day. In both cases, the IT person approves any change that a call leads to.

In each city, the clinic manager is the named person for that clinic’s record. When a vet joins or a room moves, that manager tells the IT person, and the record changes the same week.

One point stays open for now. When a fourth clinic opens, the group’s owner will look at the split again, starting with who sets up the new clinic.

Naming One Person in the Firm for Each Job

When the split is written down, it goes in one place that both the IT lead and the owner can open, beside the firm’s written setup. There, the six jobs, their marks and the names stay together. Before a new site opens, it gets its own line in the split.

Picking a route leaves three other questions open: whether the sites run the same setup, how reliable their links are and how secure they are. The first of these is taken up in the written baselines each office is matched against.

Signisys can look at a firm’s split and say which of the jobs marked Outside or Shared it would carry out.

Signisys offers one of the routes compared here. It sells IT consulting and managed services and IT service management and operations automation.

Managed IT Services vs In-House IT FAQ: Points to Settle First