The 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a rapid increase of remote working, and the years that followed created a culture of hybrid work, a boom in smaller satellite offices to support additional locales, and a lingering impact to the core function of business IT, presenting a plethora of new challenges, especially for internal IT teams.
Managed services are a great way to claim back valuable time and resources for core organizational needs, especially in a new and dynamic digital landscape.
By supplementing or taking over the monitoring + management of your business IT infrastructure, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) can offer overall cost-savings in IT spend for organizations of all sizes and industries. This article will explore five key benefits of partnering with an MSP.
Five Reasons to Partner with an MSP:
1. Business Scalability
It can be costly to maintain an appropriately staffed in-house IT team, especially for smaller organizations with limited budgets. Internal IT departments can face the challenge of being understaffed, overworked, and unable to get important tasks completed due to a lack of time and resources. Additionally, understaffed IT departments can face employee turnover at a costly rate, as losing an employee can cost 1.5-2 times the employee’s salary.
An MSP can help you expand or upgrade your operations as needed, eliminating your need to hire and train new employees to handle the growing workload. MSPs can help your organization remain flexible and can quickly accommodate changes to your business operations, size, or technology needs.
And with a co-managed approach for larger organizations, you can keep your trusted IT staff focused on the proprietary and industry-specific work that makes your business run – all while scaling your IT support capacity, maintaining and upgrading core technology, and getting proactive about the break-fix labor for the systems that keep your business up and running.
2. Controlled IT Costs
Not only can an MSP significantly cut costs for your business, one can also can make your regular IT expenses more predictable. With managed services, your expenses are packaged into a recurring monthly agreement.
Networks can become very costly, as they require a lot of equipment that must be maintained on a consistent basis. Thankfully, MSPs provide regular maintenance in addition to repairs, and can proactively anticipate the timing for certain hardware upgrades and projects so you can plan for (non-emergency) upgrade costs. This is particularly beneficial for businesses with smaller internal IT operations (or businesses without established internal IT), since the upfront costs to get started are much lower than building and maintaining everything in-house.
3. Minimized Downtime
Oftentimes, downtime can be directly attributed to equipment issues. Servers fail, computers malfunction, networking equipment goes down. Additionally, unintentional human errors can contribute to downtime, along with system attacks and electrical disruptions.
Reducing the risk of downtime can be challenging for internal IT departments to handle, especially if they’re resource-restrained, because it requires the type of proactive maintenance that's often relegated to the back burner in the face of break-fix support and IT firefighting. Managed services can safeguard your organization and significantly lower costs associated with downtime by supplementing your staffing and enabling proactivity.
4. Specialized Skillsets
Even with top notch IT staff, you simply don’t know what you don’t know. You could find that your staff isn’t well-equipped to operate new proprietary systems as you add them. Even the most well-trained IT professionals can't achieve a comprehensive knowledge of all business systems or proprietary technologies.
An MSP can partner with your existing IT department to help fill in any gaps in your team’s expertise with their specialized services. Requiring your employees to learn new skill sets, achieve supplementary certifications, or obtain specialized training can cost you valuable time and money. You can help speed up the process by leveraging an MSP to give you direct access to a team of experts with specialized skillsets.
5. Peace of Mind
During these changing times, it can be a challenge to maintain reliable support without stretching available resources and budget. Your time dedicated toward your business is valuable, and you don’t have time to worry about resolving IT disasters. Partnering with an MSP can help put your mind at ease and provide you with an experienced team of experts who will ensure security and availability are their top priority.
Managed services can also act as a bridge between your organization and technology vendors such as Microsoft, Dell, Cisco, and others. A trustworthy MSP is a valuable partner in helping your business grow, not just a service you call for one-off tasks. MSPs have a vested interest in keeping your networks and systems healthy and delivering valuable insights that can protect your bottom line.
How to Choose the Best Managed Service Provider
Like any other service, the relationship works best when you select the right partner. When searching for a new MSP, a few things to consider are:
- Defined service-level agreements: A good MSP will have flexible and affordable options to fit your business needs, but the ultimate goal of any agreement should be your uptime and your compliance. A defined service-level agreement benefits both parties, by setting clear expectations from the very beginning.
- Industry experience: Look for a managed services provider that knows their stuff. A track record of previous success is a good indicator that they have what it takes to successfully maintain your network.
- Great customer service: A high level of customer service is usually a non-negotiable for many industries, and MSPs aren't exempt. These are the people you’ll need to talk to when something goes wrong, so the right MSP team can anticipate your needs and provide high quality, around-the-clock customer service.
Is an MSP the right fit for your organization? Let’s chat!
Our business was founded on the guiding principle that we are people first and technology second. We value the people and workforce behind your technology needs and make it our top priority to truly understand your business needs.
Five Nines provides certainty during uncertain times. We partner with your existing IT department to provide reliability, scalability, and specialized skillsets at a rate that makes sense. Let us keep things simple for you, so you can focus on the parts of your business that need you most.
