Hiring Outlook for 2013: IT Experts on Demand, not on the Payroll

With 2012 an increasingly distant memory, have you considered how your IT systems fared last year? Are you implementing any big changes in 2013? If you are an upper-level IT executive, statistics show that this year, you are probably redirecting responsibility from internal staffers to third-party resources. Whether you are an IT exec or a business owner, if you don’t have such a plan, let me provide some insight into this trend and explain why this strategy makes sense.

According to a survey of CIOs (chief information officers) and other top IT execs by the Society for Information Management (SIM), internal staff consumed 33% of firms’ IT budgets in 2012, down from 38% in 2011 and 43% in 2010. In 2012, outsourcing accounted for 17% of those budgets. In 2013, survey participants expect outsourcing to jump to 23% of the IT budget.

This outlook reflects a reality that’s increasingly becoming an imperative for many companies. The cost of adding IT professionals to the payroll outweighs the expense of outsourcing IT responsibilities to third-party managed service providers. This is true, not only for management tasks such as IT systems maintenance and monitoring (more about that in a later article), but for project-based staffing, as well.

For small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), it’s too expensive to have a full complement of tech staffers that can effectively cover every aspect of a firm’s IT systems and infrastructure. And, with IT evolving at lightning speed, it’s impossible for even the most talented IT pros to stay abreast of every breaking development. As a result, when SMBs embark on highly specialized projects, either the minimal in-house staff must ramp up quickly (with unpredictable results), or outside help must be brought in.

With on-demand IT staffing, firms can procure highly targeted expertise in small increments, ensuring all their projects are executed by someone who is competent in that particular IT discipline. These specialists provide the technical foundation to ensure project success and prevent budgets from scaling out of control. As a bonus, third-party, on-demand IT assistance is a ready resource that doesn’t ask for insurance and never calls in sick during crunch times.

Well-rounded IT service firms such as DynaSis offer this type of on-demand staffing, whether a company needs network engineers to design an expansion or a high-level planning expert to assist with a strategic infrastructure roadmap. Top IT execs are increasingly awarding a large percentage of their projects to outsourced experts. To learn how you can join them, give me a call.