“Our IT guy has another full-time job.”
You have outgrown the arrangement that got you here.
This is the most common way businesses arrive at our door, and it is the most uncomfortable, because it usually involves someone people genuinely like.
A thirty-person firm we now work with had exactly this. Their IT guy was competent and well-liked. He also had a different full-time job. Nothing was wrong. They had simply grown past what one part-time person could carry, and nobody wanted to be the one to say it.
The awkward part is that outgrowing someone is not a complaint about them. The arrangement that is perfect for a business of eight is genuinely inadequate for a business of thirty, and the transition happens quietly enough that nobody notices the day it stopped working.
Right now
What is probably true today.
Based on what we find in businesses that arrive this way. Not all of it will apply. Enough of it usually does.
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Response times are fine for anything that can wait and poor for anything that cannot, because he is at his other job.
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Nothing is proactive. Work happens when you ask for it, which means nobody is watching for problems you have not noticed yet.
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There is no second person. When he is on holiday, or ill, or busy, you have no technology function at all.
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Security is whatever came with the products you bought. Layered protection needs ongoing attention that a part-time arrangement cannot provide.
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Nothing is documented, because documentation is for handovers and there has never been one.
Regardless of who you hire
What to do this week.
None of this requires us. Do it yourself, or hand it to whoever helps you with technology.
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1
Work out what an outage actually costs you
Take a day of everyone being unable to work, multiply by loaded salary cost, and add whatever revenue you would not recover. Most owners have never done this arithmetic, and it reframes the entire conversation about what adequate support is worth.
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2
Count how long the last three problems took to resolve
Not how long the fix took, how long from when someone first noticed to when it was working again. That gap is what you are actually buying when you change arrangements.
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3
Ask who covers the gaps
If your IT person were unavailable for two weeks, what happens? If the honest answer is "we would wait," you already know the size of the problem.
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4
Keep him if he is good
This is not necessarily a replacement decision. Several of our clients kept their existing person for the things they do well and brought us in for security, monitoring, and the parts that need to run continuously.
Worth reading next
Managed I.T. Services vs Hourly I.T. vs In-House I.T. vs Hybrid: An Honest Assessment of Your I.T. & Cybersecurity Options
Every year, we speak with countless companies that ask what types of I.T. services they really need for their business.
How Much Should You Spend on Managed I.T. Services?
Real numbers from real Arizona contracts: what managed IT costs per device, why per-user estimates mislead, and how to budget for your business.
If you would rather not work through it alone
Fifteen minutes, and we will tell you what we would do.
No pitch on the first call. Tell us what happened and we will tell you honestly how serious it is, what we would tackle first, and whether you need an assessment at all.
No pitch on the first call. If we are not a fit, we will say so and point you somewhere better.