If you are in business in the Black Country, Birmingham or the West Midlands and you are looking for good IT support, you will no doubt want to know how much it will cost. Here is a breakdown of how much IT support costs in Birmingham. This includes the cost of in-house IT support, tools and overhead costs vs the cost to outsource IT.
The short answer to that question is, it depends on a lot of variables, as explained in our IT support cost calculator article.
But, I guess you didn’t come here to hear that, so we will do our best to explain the factors affecting the price of IT support, as well as giving some indicative pricing based on our knowledge of the local market in Birmingham.
IT: Birmingham local market
When you buy IT support services, you are ultimately paying for the time of people who have the expertise to manage your IT systems and access to the tools they need to be effective.
The primary drivers of IT costs for the IT support company are:
- The cost of the staff who are providing the IT support
- The cost of tools and systems used to provide IT support
- The number of users or computers per member of support staff
IT cost breakdown
For example, “IT Support Company A”, has a team of ten technical staff, each paid an average salary of £24,000 per year, which is a monthly cost of £2,000. They spend a further £2,000 per month on monitoring systems, remote support tools, etc. This company has 75 clients with a total of 1,500 computers under a support contract. The total monthly cost of £22,000 divided by the number of supported machines comes to £14.67 per computer.
When we add overheads – for administration, management, premises, travel to client sites, training, etcetera – plus a small profit margin, it is typical within the industry for this number to multiply the direct costs per machine by a factor of 2.5. In the above example, this gives us a price per machine of around £37 per month.
With the above information in mind, we can see that the management team of an IT company could take the following steps if they wanted to offer low-cost IT support:
- Hire lower-paid, less qualified or less experienced staff.
- Purchase fewer or inferior support tools for their support team.
- Increase the number of supported computers per member of support staff.
- Limit the scope of the IT support contract to reduce the time spent per computer.
- Reduce overheads such as training of IT support staff, or admin and management support.
Clearly, each of the above steps would have a knock-on effect for the customer regarding quality. If your business doesn’t rely too heavily on IT, you might not need high-quality IT support and could go for a low-cost option.
One thing to bear in mind is that often, inadequate cyber security comes as a result of not having sufficient IT support in place. The cost of a security breach may far outweigh the cost of quality IT support.
IT support cost in Birmingham
We’ve seen companies offering services from £15 per month, so there are some low-cost players out there. On the other hand, we see companies charging over £100 per user, per month, which is out of the question for most organisations, particularly SMEs.
At Superfast IT, we offer an excellent value service, aimed at businesses with between 10 to 100 users for whom IT is critical. If you’re looking for the cheapest IT support option, we probably won’t be a fit. We want to do a great job for our clients. That requires skilled staff, excellent tools and systems, and enough time to spend with each customer.
Our aim is to provide quality IT support, delivered by a friendly and helpful team, at a reasonable price. We have a range of options, and you can expect to pay £30-£50 per month per user, depending on your requirements and the complexity and size of your IT infrastructure.
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