In most SMBs, key employees take on tasks that fall outside their specific job requirements. For example, the office manager could also be responsible for updating the company's website by virtue of her experience with computers. You may have taken on the responsibility of sourcing new IT solutions because you also determine the annual budget.

At some point, the needs of the business exceed your time and ability to meet them yourself. It's fairly easy to determine when you need to hire a receptionist or an accountant, but what are the triggers that signal it's time to hire IT help?

Some common triggers are:

• High-priority projects: You've identified one or more high-priority IT projects that require time and expertise that you don't have in-house.
• Maintenance tasks: You're spending an increasing amount of time maintaining your IT infrastructure, reducing your ability to focus on core business processes.
• A cumbersome or outdated infrastructure: Your IT infrastructure has become difficult to manage due to complexity, outdated equipment and software or patchwork upgrades, and is interfering with the smooth functioning of your business.
• Knowledge drain: You're tired of spending your off hours learning how to perform complicated IT tasks rather than keeping current with your own industry.

You might find that no single trigger justifies hiring an IT resource. However, together they signal a situation in which hiring outside or additional IT help results in a more profitable business, and a business that's flexible enough to successfully adapt to market changes. The following sections examine each trigger in detail.

High-priority projects

When it's time to create a presence on the internet, or you're implementing a full-scale e-commerce solution, hiring an expert makes sense if you don't have the design and technical expertise to handle the project in-house. If your company has grown to the point that keeping customer records in a filing cabinet is no longer efficient, you need to implement an electronic and organization-wide customer contact and tracking database instead. Unless you have the time to devote to research and implementation, bringing in someone to complete the project makes sense and frees you to concentrate on other tasks.

You know your business, and you know better than anyone when you've hit the point at which the processes you've been using are no longer feasible. To decide whether any of these projects warrant hiring an outside IT resource, you need to answer a few questions:

• Is the project so critical that you can't afford to teach yourself the technology as you go? Designing and implementing a customer records system might fall into this category, because you're dealing with some of the most important information your business owns. On the other hand, setting up a simple website is a project that's low-impact enough that you can afford to make a mistake or two as you learn.
• Do you have several IT projects that you'd like to complete simultaneously? If time is a critical factor, consider hiring someone who can take care of all of your IT projects in one-, three- or six-month sessions, rather than stringing them out over the course of one or two years.
• Have you tried to solve the problem yourself and gotten lost in the technical details? There's nothing wrong with bringing in an expert to get the job done; after all, that's exactly why your clients hire your business: to do what you're best at.

Maintenance tasks

If you have a simple office network, you might spend only three or four hours every month making sure everything is working properly and all data is backed up. However, if your infrastructure involves a large company website, complex or custom applications or a more complicated network, you and other employees may find yourselves spending several hours every week updating and maintaining the system.

Common IT support tasks include:

• Server maintenance, such as applying and testing patches and updates, checking the integrity of the firewall and applying updates, performing backups and checking media and reviewing performance logs

Any office network that's connected to the internet needs someone to check and strengthen security at least every week. If your network isn't protected by a firewall and a regularly updated antivirus solution, you should hire someone who knows basic network security to set it up.

• Software and hardware installations
• Workstation maintenance, such as cleaning hard disks, running optimization tools and ensuring antivirus protection is current
• Website maintenance, such as fixing broken links, finding missing images, ensuring user feedback is answered and running usage reports

Calculate the average number of hours you and other employees spend each week performing IT-related tasks that aren't part of your role in the company. For example, let's say you spend 10 hours per week on IT maintenance tasks, and five other employees frequently spend 5 hours each, which totals 35 hours per week.

Considering outsourcing maintenance tasks if any one person spends a weekly average of 4 or more hours, or 10 percent of their work hours. A total of 40 hours or more per week is enough justification to hire a full-time employee, especially considering the benefits you'll gain from freeing your staff to devote all of their time to their respective roles.

Cumbersome or outdated infrastructure

Have you lost business opportunities or clients due to your inadequate IT infrastructure? Not bidding on a project because you failed to meet the technical requirements of a request for proposal (RFP) isn't necessarily an indication your company is falling behind. However, regularly missing business opportunities or losing one or more major clients due to inadequate internal technology is a sign for change.

Performing a major infrastructure upgrade is complicated. To fulfill the primary business objective—making the company run more efficiently—the project should encompass the following phases:

• Requirements analysis: Determine exactly which benefits you expect to achieve from upgrading your infrastructure.
• Solution research: Find a solution that meets all your requirements without saddling you with unnecessary features.
• Product sourcing: Find one or more vendors to provide the necessary hardware and software.
• Implementation: Deploy the upgrade with minimal impact on your existing system and users.
• Testing: Ensure the new system is working optimally before replacing the existing infrastructure.
• Training: Train staff members on the use of the system to ensure you meet the goal of the project.

Outsourcing companies have done many infrastructure upgrades, so they have a time-tested system in place to cover all of these points. They know the key questions to ask, and can assist you with time-consuming research and sourcing tasks. Many also include comprehensive training on the new system as part of the project cost.

Knowledge drain

Even the simplest IT project often requires a considerable amount of research. For example, installing a new network printer involves researching various printer features and options before you decide which product your business needs. Then you have to be sure that the networking options are compatible with your existing network, and learn how to set various configuration options so the new printer works optimally.

Your days are filled with managing your business, which is your first priority. If you find yourself devoting several evenings every week, or several weekends a month, to self-teaching yourself the fundamentals of IT, you should consider bringing in someone who already knows how to implement your company's IT needs.

As with maintenance tasks, calculate the number of hours you spend on average each week or would have to spend prior to a major project to fill your IT knowledge gap. Draw the line at roughly 10 percent of your work hours and bring in IT help.

The next section explores IT support tasks that are efficiently outsourced.