One full-time employee should be able to support roughly 50 to 150 computer users.

As a rule of thumb, one full-time employee should be able to support 50 to 150 computer users. If the organization uses technology more intensively or has significant customer-facing technology, the IT staff demands might be greater. And vice versa: If the company has relatively simplistic needs and is less reliant on technology, one employee can be stretched to service more users and infrastructure. So, an average company with 50 employees, for example, might be over-investing in technology support if they hire a full-time IT person.

Employee specialization is ideal. Trying to take on many responsibilities often means you aren’t doing any of those roles as well as you could. It’s best to avoid the “slash”.

The Slash – IT Director/Marketing Manager

The “slash” is someone that is responsible for two (or more) significant functions, i.e. IT/Controller. Some roles are more complementary to IT than others, but as a rule, you don’t want someone trying to decide whether to spend the day delivering product or service to a customer or spending time on the internal IT — neither task tends to be accomplished well or efficiently.

Outsourcing IT to Smart Dolphins, can be scaled to the needs of the organization. Often this change comes with the assumption that your IT costs will increase. But when you consider the challenges we’ve discussed above, outsourcing can be an efficient way to properly allocate your IT investment.

Next week I will be discussing the total costs of hiring a full time person.