Outsourcing IT: A Guide to Financial Benefits and Risks

Your IT should be stable. It should be secure. And it should support your team.

For many mid-sized companies, that’s not the reality. Teams are stretched. Costs are rising. Progress is slowing down.

Managed IT services give you a better way forward. They bring control, consistency, and room to grow.

This guide shows you what internal IT really costs, what managed services deliver, and how to decide what’s right for your business.

Table of Contents

⚙️   What Are the True Costs of Running an In-House IT Team?

🛠️   What Do You Actually Get from a Managed Services Provider?

🚨   What Are the Hidden Risks of Staying In-House?

🤔   When Does Outsourcing Your IT Make Strategic Sense?

📈   What’s the ROI of Managed IT Services?

🔍   How Do You Choose the Right Managed IT Services Provider?

👋   Conclusion

What Are the True Costs of Running an In-House IT Team?

On paper, an internal IT team looks like a fixed cost. In some cases, it’s a cost center with layers of hidden expenses.

Salaries for experienced IT professionals often range from $130,000 to $170,000 in North America. Add in benefits, training, certifications, recruitment, and essential tools like software, hardware, and licenses. The full investment per team member can easily go beyond $200,000 a year.

And that’s just the direct spend.

When someone leaves, projects stall and productivity drops. When your team is short-handed, support tickets pile up. When patching or backups fall behind, you open the door to outages and breaches.

Cost Comparison: Internal IT vs. Managed Services Provider

Managed IT services convert unpredictable, layered IT expenses into a flat, forecastable monthly investment.

What Do You Actually Get from a Managed Services Provider?

Most MSPs offer a broad set of services, though the exact mix can vary from provider to provider. These are the core features you should expect from a modern partner that’s built to deliver performance, protection, and scale:

• 24/7 Monitoring and Support
  Issues are identified and resolved quickly. Coverage continues through nights, weekends, and holidays.

• Advanced Cybersecurity Protection
  Continuous monitoring, endpoint protection, threat response, patching, and firewall oversight are standard.

• Cloud Optimization and Licensing Control
  Pay only for what your team uses. Scale up or down as needed while reducing complexity from multiple vendors.

• Automated Backups and Recovery Plans
  Tested recovery processes ensure downtime is limited and data is restored quickly when needed.

• Strategic IT Advisory
  Senior experts align IT planning with business goals, supporting initiatives like AI pilots, compliance readiness, and digital transformation.

• Access to Enterprise Tools
  Microsoft 365, Power Platform, and Copilot which give your teams access to productivity tools without additional overhead.

Every feature addresses a real business challenge. The right Managed Services Provider (MSP) helps you keep operations stable, secure, and moving forward while freeing internal teams to focus on innovation instead of routine firefighting.

What Are the Hidden Risks of Staying In-House?

Security, uptime, and business continuity all suffer when a small team is stretched too thin. And often, those cracks show up when it’s too late to fix them quickly.

Here’s where the real exposure lies:

• Downtime adds up fast.
  According to recent findings, the average cost of an unplanned IT outage is $14,056 per minute. That’s over $840,000 per hour. A single missed alert or delayed patch can grind your business to a halt.

• Limited coverage means delayed response.
  If your lead IT person is out of the office or juggling multiple issues, how quickly can threats be neutralized?

• Turnover creates major disruption.
  When internal IT leaders leave, knowledge gaps widen. Projects stall. Recruiting takes months. During that time, systems stay vulnerable.

• Too much reactive work, not enough strategy.
  Ticket queues, manual updates, and system maintenance. These are essential tasks. But they don’t push the business forward.

Each of these risks increases pressure on your people and your bottom line.

A managed services partner brings consistency, expertise, and scale that internal teams can’t always deliver on their own.

When Does Outsourcing Your IT Make Strategic Sense?

Most companies don’t switch to managed IT because of one big problem. They switch because of a pattern.

Projects fall behind. Staff are overloaded. Costs creep upward without clear results. Suddenly, the question isn’t “should we outsource IT?” It’s “why haven’t we already?”

Here are five signals that may tell you it’s time to consider managed services:

1. IT issues are slowing down business goals.
   Product launches, client onboarding, and reporting cycles. When core functions stall because of tech delays, something needs to change.

2. Your team spends more time reacting than planning.
   If helpdesk tickets eat up most of the day, there’s little room for strategy, automation, or innovation.

3. You can't hire or retain the talent you need.
   Specialized skills like cybersecurity, cloud architecture, or AI integration are hard to find. Even harder to keep.

4. Your IT budget is unpredictable.
   Unexpected licensing fees, hardware replacements, and contractor invoices make it hard to forecast and scale with confidence.

5. You want to do more with AI, automation, or cloud but don’t have the bandwidth.
   You have the vision. The team has the talent. But they’re buried under manual tasks and maintenance work.

If two or more of these signs feel familiar, you’re likely already spending more than you need. And getting less than you should.

Who Benefits and How

• Here’s a quick look at how different teams benefit:
  • Finance teams, including roles like CFO, gain budget stability, fewer financial surprises, and clearer ROI.
  • Operations teams experience smoother workflows, faster issue resolution, and improved system performance.
  • Leadership teams spend less time reacting to issues and more time driving strategic initiatives.

The benefits of managed IT services are extensive. In fact, we’ve written a dedicated blog post that dives into them in detail. Check it out here: 15 Key Benefits of Using Managed IT Services

What’s the ROI of Managed IT Services?

Outsourcing IT is about getting more value from every dollar you spend.

With managed IT services, your business becomes more stable, more secure, and more efficient. Here's how that return shows up:

• Fewer Outages
  MSPs monitor your systems 24/7 and fix issues before they become major problems. That means less downtime and fewer interruptions to your operations.

• Faster Fixes
  When something goes wrong, response times are faster. No waiting around for someone to become available.

• Stronger Security
  Regular updates, threat detection, and protection tools are always active. You reduce your risk of costly breaches or data loss.

• Predictable Costs
  You pay a fixed monthly fee. No more surprise invoices or emergency repairs eating into your budget.

• More Time for Strategic Work
  Your internal IT team spends less time on routine tasks and more time focusing on strategic initiatives such as enhancing IT architecture, rolling out new tools, optimizing processes, and driving digital transformation.

What Does It Look Like in Real Life?

Here’s a simple example:

A mid-sized company with 100 users moves to managed IT services. 

Before outsourcing:

• Their internal team handled everything, but couldn’t keep up with patches or security updates.

• Downtime cost them over $50,000 in just one quarter.

• Strategic projects, like cloud upgrades, were delayed by months.

After outsourcing:

• Downtime dropped by 80%.

• Security alerts are handled within minutes.

• Their IT team started rolling out Microsoft Copilot and dashboard tools that helped sales and finance work faster.

They saved money by avoiding downtime and made money by speeding up internal projects. That’s ROI that matters.

How Do You Choose the Right Managed IT Services Provider?

Not all MSPs are built the same. Some just fix problems when they happen. Others work with you to prevent them, improve performance, and align IT with your business strategy.

Here’s what to look for when evaluating a managed services provider:

• Proactive Support
  Do they wait for things to break, or do they actively monitor, patch, and improve your systems?

• Clear Pricing
  Are costs predictable, easy to understand, and tied to outcomes?

• Security Expertise
  Can they show you exactly how they protect your data, users, and infrastructure?

• Scalability
  Will they grow with you? Can they support expansion, new tools, and remote work setups without disruption?

• Business Alignment
  Do they speak your language? Are they helping you hit goals and not just close tickets?

• Strategic Advice
  Are they bringing ideas to the table? Helping you explore automation, AI, or reporting improvements?

Look for a partner who doesn’t just “do IT.” Look for one who helps your business move faster, stay safer, and spend smarter.

Conclusion

Technology should move your business forward, not hold it back.

When IT runs smoothly, teams stay productive, leaders gain clarity, and growth feels possible. That’s the real value of managed services: fewer roadblocks, stronger protection, and a partner who helps you focus on what matters most.

At ProServeIT, we work alongside your team to deliver stability today and create space for innovation tomorrow.

MSPs today don’t just keep the lights on. They help you unlock the power of custom software development, scale your infrastructure, implement security frameworks, and boost productivity at home or in the workplace with AI.

Now is the time to stop patching holes and start planning transformation. Partner with ProServeIT and start creating a solid technology framework for your organization through our managed IT services. Contact us today.