Sourcing Support: In-House, Outsourced or Co-Managed

"We become your IT department." It is on slide four of the deck, under a photograph of people smiling at a server. The person reading it is the IT department. Somewhere else a director is reading the same slide and seeing a line item become a monthly fee. Somewhere else again an administrator a year into a contract is reading a green service report. The users rate the desk five out of ten. All three of them are asking the same question: who should run support here? None of them has been given a straight answer. The straight answer is "it depends", and the deck does not have a slide for that.

This series is the straight answer, with the dependencies written out. A managed service provider, or MSP, is an outside company that runs some or all of your IT for a recurring fee. The series is for the administrator weighing an MSP contract, and the one who has a contract and is unhappy with it. It is also for the one being asked to justify an in-house desk. It covers the three sourcing models and what each costs in money, control and knowledge. It covers the five things to keep in-house whichever model you choose. It covers how to work with an MSP without losing the plot, and how to design a co-managed desk with one queue of record. Then comes how to bring support back in-house in ninety days. And it includes a worksheet for deciding. That way, the decision is made by the numbers rather than by whoever has the strongest feelings in the room. If you are the provider rather than the client, the product side of running one queue of record for fourteen companies is on ticketing for a small MSP.

Articles in This Series

• The Three Sourcing Models, Plainly
  In-house, MSP and co-managed defined; what each costs in money, control and knowledge; and who each fits. Also covers the hidden costs of all three, the question that decides more than cost, and a comparison table for the director.
• What to Keep In-House No Matter What
  Identity decisions, incident declaration, vendor relationships, the knowledge of how the business works, and the records. Covers the owner-of-record idea, keeping a copy quarterly, the four clauses to insist on, and a checklist.
• Working With an MSP Without Losing the Plot
  SLAs that measure the person rather than the portal; the ticket handoff and the queue of record; and who tells the user. Also covers your own copy of the knowledge, the fifteen-minute monthly review, escalation on both sides, and a review sheet.
• Designing a Co-Managed Support Desk
  The three ways to split by tier, hours or domain; one queue of record; and one front door for the user. Covers the seam and the handoff rule, scoped permissions for the provider's engineers, the weekly seam review, and a design sheet.
• Bringing Support Back In-House
  Why it happens; the knowledge gap and its inventory; and the ninety-day exit plan. Covers what to insist on at handover, the overlap period, the first month alone and the three numbers to watch, and an exit checklist.
• The Sourcing Decision Worksheet
  Five axes of volume, hours, skills, control and budget shape, each scored one to three. Covers three worked examples, what the worksheet cannot tell you, when to rescore, and the worksheet itself with a reading guide.

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This series is part of the QuerySolv helpdesk topic library. It covers the foundations, processes, communication, knowledge, tooling, metrics, classic ticket domains, people and strategy behind a support desk that works. The library pairs well with the software we build: QuerySolv. It is a self-hosted help desk that runs as one Windows service on your own network. It is licensed once per installation, not per agent per month.