One quarter of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) outsource their IT services, writes daily Business Standard.

A survey by IT Assist, a company that provides IT outsourcing services, shows that 41 pct of the Bucharest-based companies seek an expert to have their networks or workstations configured and optimised and only 24 pct hire a specialized company, whereas 17 pct have an in-house employee handle the task.

It comes out that outsourcing IT services, a highly popular option in Western countries, is just at the beginning in Romania.

Especially in functional terms, the structure of the IT system is somewhat the same, regardless the company size, so that the main components a company has ready for outsourcing are the Internet connection and adjacent services: webpage, e-mail, navigation, IT hardware competence that includes servers, workstations, printers, scanners, UPS devices and general applications such as the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, data saving and internal communication applications.

According to the survey, some 40 pct of the small and medium sized companies that operate in Bucharest plan to resort in the future to a specialized company capable of offering them complete IT services – systems installation and configuration, equipment procurement and support services. 

IT Assist director general Alexandru Arghiropol says that IT outsourcing to a specialized company results in far lower costs than if a dedicated person were hired and also compared to the variant that a “more skilled employee who has other tasks inside the company” were to offer support.

According to the survey, 22 pct of the polled companies prefer acquaintances or in-house employees with minimum knowledge to handle their IT issues. Yet in this case cost trimming is false because many a time the reconfiguration and subsequent reinstallation of equipment by a real expert is necessary.