Sooner or later every growing company asks itself this question: hire a full-time technician or hand support over to an external helpdesk. The answer is not obvious, because it depends on the size of the company, the pace of growth and how critical IT is to daily work. Below I break both options down into their parts, without marketing generalities.

What a helpdesk actually does, and what a technician does

Let us start with the fact that these are not exactly the same roles. An in-house technician knows the company inside out, sits next to people and reacts to what is happening on site. A helpdesk is an organised team that takes requests, classifies them and resolves them remotely according to set procedures.

In practice the difference comes down to three things:

  • Availability. One person works 8 hours a day and takes holidays. A helpdesk team works continuously, usually between 8:00 and 18:00, and often longer.
  • Range of skills. A technician is a generalist. A helpdesk is backed by specialists in networks, servers, Microsoft 365 and security.
  • Scale. One person will handle 20, maybe 40 workstations. Above that they start to struggle.

The cost you can see and the cost that hides

A full-time technician is not just a salary. To the pay you have to add contributions, holidays, training, equipment, licences for administrative tools and the cost of recruitment when they leave. In Warsaw an experienced administrator is, in practice, a total cost of well over ten thousand zloty a month.

A helpdesk on a subscription model gives you a predictable invoice and spreads access to many skills across many clients. You pay a fraction of the cost of a team you could not maintain on your own.

The most expensive thing is neither the technician nor the subscription, but an hour of downtime for the whole company when the only IT person happens to be on sick leave. That risk is worth pricing before you count salaries.

The risk of one person

This is the most commonly overlooked point. A company bases all of its IT on one individual, and then that individual falls ill, takes a two-week holiday or hands in their notice. What is left is an environment nobody knows, passwords in a head that has just walked out the door, and no documentation.

A helpdesk, by definition, spreads that knowledge across a team and keeps documentation of the environment, because otherwise it could not cope with many clients itself. Cover is built into the model.

When to choose an in-house technician

A full-time person makes sense when:

  • The company has more than 40 or 50 workstations and small matters requiring hands-on, on-site handling come up every day.
  • You have specific production or industry systems that require constant, deep familiarity.
  • You need someone physically present, who knows the people and responds immediately to the equipment on the desks.

In such companies the in-house technician often works with an external partner anyway, one that takes over servers, security and the nights.

When to choose a helpdesk

External support works well when:

  • The company has anywhere from a few to a few dozen workstations and does not want to maintain a whole full-time role.
  • You want a broad range of skills without hiring several specialists.
  • You need a predictable budget and guaranteed response times in a contract.
  • You want continuity that does not depend on one person’s holiday.

A well-organised IT helpdesk gives you one more thing that is hard to expect from a single employee: a standardised process for handling requests, thanks to which every matter is logged, prioritised and accounted for.

The mixed model, the best of both worlds

In many companies the optimal answer turns out to be a combination. An in-house person or IT coordinator takes care of day-to-day matters and contact with people, while an external partner takes over infrastructure, security, servers and second-line support. Such an arrangement lifts from one person the burden of being an expert in everything.

How to set it up in practice:

  • Agree a clear division of roles, who is responsible for what and where one side ends and the other begins.
  • Keep one shared register of requests so that nothing gets lost between providers.
  • Ensure documentation of the environment is available to both sides.

How to make the decision

Before you choose, answer a few questions for yourself:

  • How many workstations do we actually support and how fast are we growing?
  • What happens if IT goes down for a whole day? How much does that cost us?
  • Do we need a physical presence, or can most matters be handled remotely?
  • Do we want a predictable subscription, or do we prefer a fixed cost in the form of a full-time role?

An honest answer usually points to the direction itself. For most SMEs the advantage is on the side of external support, because it gives a broader team and continuity more cheaply than maintaining comparable skills in a full-time role.

If you are wondering which model would be best for your scale, we will gladly work it out together on your numbers. Our IT outsourcing in Warsaw can be arranged either as full support or as a complement to an in-house person. Start with a short conversation in which you tell us about the company, and we will suggest what pays off.