When a business outgrows what its own people can handle, there are three common ways to add capacity: managed IT support, staff augmentation and process outsourcing. They sound similar, but they solve different problems.
Managed IT and remote support
An outside team takes responsibility for your technology day to day: the help desk, monitoring, updates, backup and access control. You buy an outcome (working technology) and a service level (how fast people respond), not individual people.
Best when you do not have an in-house IT team, or you have a small one that is stretched across help desk requests and projects.
Staff augmentation
An outside partner recruits, vets and manages professionals who work as part of your team, using your tools and following your processes. You direct the work. The partner handles hiring, training, replacement and the administration around it.
Best when you know what the role is and want the capacity quickly, but do not want to hire locally or manage recruitment and payroll yourself.
Process outsourcing
An outside team takes over a whole process, such as billing, payables or data processing. The team follows documented procedures, works to agreed service levels and reports on results. You buy the outcome of the process.
Best when the work is repeatable and high-volume, and you would rather manage results than manage people.
How to choose
- If the problem is technology that does not work reliably, start with managed IT.
- If the problem is not enough hands on a known role, start with staff augmentation.
- If the problem is a process that consumes your team's time, start with outsourcing that process.
Many businesses use all three over time. A common path is to secure and stabilise IT first, add skilled people where the team is thin, and then hand over whole processes once the foundation is solid. That is the path Talos is designed around.
Questions to ask any provider
- Who is accountable if something goes wrong?
- What response targets are published, and how are they reported?
- How are people vetted, trained and supervised?
- What happens if someone leaves or is not the right fit?
- How is our data protected, and who has access to it?