When a company is at an early stage of its life, the founder usually thinks it will make some sense – from a cost-saving standpoint – to be hands-on in managing the office servers, computers, and other hardware. The concern usually is that engaging professionals to keep the IT tools in top condition will be more expensive than engaging an in-house IT staff.
So the company decides on an in-house staff, only to discover that it still needs to invest money to engage a professional to get the job done properly. No matter the efforts put in, an in-house team of experts will never be sufficiently able to fulfill the demands of the organisation.
To be sure, a professional IT support provider helps manage the network, users, services, and devices that are integral to a company’s operations. It helps guarantee that the organisation’s network is current and that its technology provides seamless operations across all departments, hierarchies, and roles within the company.
In many parts of the world, outsourcing a range of business functions has become common practice for enterprises. According to data from Statista, the global market size of outsourced services in 2017 was valued at $88.9 billion, representing a $12 billion rise from the previous year. Businesses are opting for outsourcing for the many benefits that come with it.
While outsourcing may not be as pervasive in Nigeria as it is elsewhere in the world, it is not a new space. Tranter IT Infrastructure Services Limited, founded by Lare Ayoola, recently celebrated its 15 years serving many of the big banks and organisations in Nigeria.
Read also: KOPE to leverage mentorship in deepening Nigeria’s tech start-up space
“Many people thought it was not possible to be outsourcing business in a country like Nigeria when we were starting. Even the banks will not give us their business,” Ayoola told Businessday in an interview. To get the banks to change their minds about Tranter IT, he recalled asking one of the banks to engage three of his engineers for 6 months free and return them if they did not meet the expectations.
“Five months to working with them, the bank MD called me and said, “We want to engage your engineers permanently,” we were in business,” he said.
Tranter’s business has since grown to cover nearly all the banks and major corporations in the country. Six years ago, the company secured a partnership with Manageengine as its principal distributor in Nigeria. The company is constantly exposing its engineers to different training programs to keep them ahead.
“I don’t know why a company would not outsource its IT support. It makes no sense from a cost perspective,” Ayoola said.
Aside from cost reduction, other benefits of outsourcing the IT unit is the capacity to free up internal resources. By outsourcing the IT support to a third-party provider, a company can channel its internal resources to new areas that could bring growth to the business.
Since the quality of support and management, the IT resources from professionals is usually the same with global standards, it gives a company the leverage to go for bigger business opportunities.
