Guide · Running your technology
What is an outsourced IT department, and what should it cover?
What a whole tech department actually does, which bits most outsourced IT leaves out, and the questions that tell you which kind you're talking to.
Search for "outsourced IT for small businesses" and you'll find hundreds of companies offering to be your IT department. Read the small print and most of them are offering to be your help desk. That's a useful thing to have. It just isn't a department.
The six jobsWhat does an IT department actually do?
In a big company, the IT department is a team of specialists. In a small one, the same work still needs doing, it's just that nobody's job title says so. We break it into six jobs.
| The job | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Desk support | Laptops, printers, password resets, "my email's stopped working". |
| Systems and cloud | Servers, hosting, AWS or Azure, Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, accounts and access. |
| Security | Updates, two-factor login, who can see what, Cyber Essentials, what to do if you're hacked. |
| Backups and recovery | Copies kept off site, and restores that are actually tested. |
| Software | Building, joining up and maintaining the systems the business runs on: the CRM, the portal, the stock system, the spreadsheet that's quietly become critical. |
| Planning and suppliers | Deciding what's worth spending money on, choosing suppliers, keeping projects moving, and explaining it all to the board. |
A proper outsourced IT department covers all six. Most outsourced IT covers the first one well, the second and third partly, and the last two not at all.
Why most outsourced IT is really desk support
This isn't a dig at IT support companies. The good ones are very good at what they do. But the business model is built around the help desk: a fee per user per month, a ticket system, engineers who fix things when they break. That model works brilliantly for laptops and accounts.
It doesn't stretch to software. When you need a customer portal, or your shop joined up with your stock system, or someone to take over code the last developer left behind, the usual answer is "you'll need a software house for that". So now you have two suppliers. The software house builds something, hands it over and sends an invoice. The IT company is asked to host it and isn't quite sure what it is. When it breaks, each one thinks it's the other's problem.
Strategy goes the same way. Someone has to decide whether to build or buy, which subscriptions to drop, and what the business needs in a year's time. On most per-user contracts that's nobody's job, so it ends up on the managing director's desk, or the office manager's, on top of everything else.
That gap between suppliers is where most of the expensive problems we get called in to fix started.
What does an outsourced IT department cost?
For desk support alone, UK IT support companies usually charge per user per month, from about £30 to over £100 depending on what's included (Compare the Cloud's UK pricing guide breaks this down). For 20 people, that's roughly £7,000 to £25,000 a year.
Add the software and planning side separately and the sums change quickly. The median UK software developer contract rate is around £525 a day (ITJobsWatch), a fractional CTO is typically £800 to £1,600 a day (Fractional Quest), and a custom build comes with a project invoice of its own. We go through all of those in what an IT department costs a small business.
Compare that with doing it in-house: one decent all-round hire is about £55,000 a year once you add National Insurance, pension, kit and recruitment, and you'd need three or four people to cover all six jobs.
Questions to ask any outsourced IT provider
These are the questions that separate a help desk from a department. Ask them before you sign anything, including if you're talking to us.
- Who builds and maintains our software? If the answer is "we'd refer you to a partner", you'll be managing two suppliers.
- Who owns our code, our domain and our logins? The right answer is "you do, from day one". If you can't get at them without the supplier's help, you don't really own them. Our guide to what to do when your developer leaves shows why this matters.
- Who's responsible when two suppliers disagree? Ask for a real example. Someone has to own the problem until it's fixed, not until it's proven to be someone else's fault.
- Who decides what we should spend money on? Is there a named person who'll plan with you, or just a help desk queue?
- Is it per user or a flat fee, and what triggers extra charges? Per-user pricing is simple, but check what counts as "out of scope". Projects, new starters and anything involving software are common extras.
- How do you test the backups? "They're monitored" isn't the same as "we restored one last quarter and here's the write-up".
- What's the notice period, and what happens at handover? Three-year contracts with long notice periods are still common. Find out what you'd get on the way out: documentation, passwords, a walk-through.
- Where does desk support stop? If they don't cover laptops and printers, who does, and who manages that relationship?
Where Dev Partners fits
This is what we do, so take this bit with the appropriate pinch of salt.
Your tech department covers five of the six jobs as one team, for one monthly fee: systems and cloud, security, backups, software and planning. Building and changing software is part of the monthly arrangement, worked through from a list we agree the order of, rather than quoted job by job. It's led by our fractional CTO, there's a month's notice, and everything we build is yours.
The sixth job, day-to-day desk support, we deliberately don't do. Local IT support companies do it well and more cheaply than we could. What we do is help you choose a good one, write their brief and keep them on track, so there's still one team responsible for the whole picture.
What we'd do in your shoes
Start by writing the six jobs down and putting a name next to each one. Not a company, a person. If a job has no name, or the name belongs to someone whose real job is something else, that's your gap.
If the only gap is desk support, a good IT support company is all you need. If the gaps are software, security and planning, which they usually are for businesses of 10 to 100 people, you need something closer to a department. Either way, make sure one party is responsible for the whole thing, and that you own every login, every line of code and every domain.
If you'd like someone to do that exercise with you, it's how we start with every client: a review of everything, then a written plan you keep whatever you decide.
Common questions
An outside team that does the work of an in-house IT department: planning, systems and cloud, security, backups, software and supplier management. Many providers sold as outsourced IT only cover desk support and the network, so check what is included.
Desk support from an IT support company typically costs about £30 to over £100 per user per month. A full outsourced tech department that also covers software and planning is usually priced as one monthly fee, based on the size of the business and how much is being built, and should cost less than one in-house hire.
For most businesses under about 50 people, yes. One in-house hire costs around £55,000 a year and brings one set of skills. Outsourcing gets you several specialists and holiday cover for less.
Clear ownership of your code, domains and logins; who handles software; how backups are tested; what counts as out of scope; the notice period; and exactly what happens at handover if you leave.
Put a name next to each job
Tell us what you have now and we'll show you where the gaps are.
Who looks after what, which suppliers you use, and what keeps falling between them. If a good IT support company is all you need, we'll say so.
Rather talk now? Book a call or ring 01474 639 089.
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