10 Reasons For SMBs To Hire A Managed IT Services Provider

Is your in-house IT staff overwhelmed by the task of maintaining the security and performance of your IT infrastructure? Is network downtime hurting your company’s bottom line? Are you frustrated by business continuity and scalability issues as your business grows? Are you confused by all of the cybersecurity compliance requirements?

Like you, many businesses today, large and small, are facing a growing list of IT challenges. Rapidly changing technologies may have your head spinning trying to keep up.

Some of the main IT issues small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are facing today include:

• data security and privacy issues
• IT integration and compatibility roadblocks
• limited IT budgets and internal resources
• compliance challenges
• data backup and recovery
• IT scalability
• lack of expert staff

When asked, “What trends do we need to watch during the year ahead,” business executives, middle managers, and specialist staff cited technology shifts as the top external factor that will affect their business in 2025, according to a recent study by Forbes magazine.

This article will answer some commonly asked questions about IT outsourcing such as: Why choose managed IT services? What does a managed IT services company provide? What is the difference between break-fix IT services and managed IT support?

After reading this article you will understand the benefits of managed IT services for small and medium-sized enterprises. You will also discover how you can improve business efficiency and optimize your budget with cost savings realized through managed IT support.

With this information, you will be able to decide if managed IT services makes sense for your business.

10 Top Reasons To Hire A Managed IT Services Company

1. Maximize your budget:

Cost savings is one of the biggest—and most under-appreciated—reasons for hiring managed IT support. By partnering with an MSP, you’re able to maximize your budget to solve your IT challenges while aligning it with your short- and long-term business goals.

The benefits of using an external IT managed services provider are many. It means that you don’t have to spend enormous amounts of time and money to advertise, recruit, train, and supervise a roster of different IT professionals to handle all your technology-related issues.

Keeping all of those individuals on staff would also mean higher operational costs, including having to purchase any new equipment and software solutions needed for your internal IT team to perform their jobs.

Instead of making such a long-term financial commitment, you can rely on the team of IT experts your MSP brings, along with their vast knowledge and experience across various industries.

Not only that, but you can also save even more money by leveraging the MSPs existing partnerships with third-party vendors to get competitive prices on devices and software.

2. Improve business efficiency:

Managed IT providers not only give you immediate access to expert staff, they also enable you to take advantage of the latest software solutions and technologies.

If you do run into a technical issue with your desktops, laptops, servers, or network equipment, your MSP can troubleshoot and repair those problems. (Your agreement will spell out how long you can expect response and remediation to take.)

Downtime costs small and medium-sized businesses an estimated $145,000 to $450,000 an hour, and can jump to well over $1 million an hour for large enterprises, according to a report by SolarWinds.

With your MSP monitoring your IT infrastructure and staying on top of any technical issues, you can have greater confidence that your network and systems are working in harmony together with minimal disruptions. This increased efficiency helps eliminate downtime and lost productivity within your organization.

3. Greater security for your data and IT environment:

Data security and network resilience are critical issues for organizations today because of the rising number of cyber attacks.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are frequent targets of bad actors looking for ways to infiltrate your IT systems and steal or compromise your sensitive information.

A managed services provider uses advanced software and technology, including machine learning capabilities through artificial intelligence (AI), to proactively monitor your systems 24/7 365 days a year.

The MSP can evaluate any suspicious activity that is flagged and launch automated threat detection and response tools to quickly identify and destroy any confirmed threats.

4. Increase scalability:

As your business grows, your technology needs to be adaptable. Hiring new staff and integrating new devices and software means your IT infrastructure must be ready to handle the additional demands required by your business.

This seamless integration will minimize disruptions to help you keep your business edge.

5. Preventative maintenance:

Managed IT support also provides preventative maintenance like automated operating system patching and software updates to your workstations and other devices.

You can capitalize on 24/7/365 monitoring with preventative maintenance to minimize IT issues before they cause major disruptions, saving you valuable time and money.

6. Remote onboarding:

Being able to transition your new remote employees into the fold quickly is also easier with managed IT support. Remote onboarding can be a tricky and confusing process to navigate for both you and your new hires.

By leaving the responsibility of bringing on new remote staff to your MSP, you can eliminate the headaches and ensure your newest team members have all the resources they need to do their jobs effectively.

7. Align with strategic goals:

By assessing your IT infrastructure and developing a comprehensive plan, your MSP can ensure that your IT plan fits in with your strategic business goals and objectives.

An MSP can evaluate your entire IT environment and help you determine the best solutions that will resolve your IT pain points and help propel your business into the future.

8. Show Regulatory Compliance:

The federal government has been imposing tighter cybersecurity requirements on organizations to provide greater protection for sensitive information. Organizations must meet the security controls laid out in regulations like CMMC, NIST 800-171, and HIPAA in order to show compliance.

An MSP can assess your IT landscape, identify security gaps, and propose a comprehensive plan to address those vulnerable areas so that you can meet the tougher security standards within your industry.

9. Satisfy Cyber Insurance Requirements:

Similar to the government, insurance companies are requiring organizations to meet stricter cybersecurity measures in order to keep their policies.

Whether it’s protecting your data and systems in the cloud or implementing multi-factor authentication and endpoint protection, an MSP can ensure that your business can adjust to the tougher insurance mandates each year.

10. Gain Peace of Mind

As we’ve discussed, slow processing time and frequent disruptions, evolving cybersecurity threats, compliance factors, downtime, and scalability are just some of the main IT pain points organizations like yours are facing in today’s technology-driven world.

By outsourcing your IT, you let your MSP do the heavy lifting of ensuring the health and security of your IT infrastructure so that you can focus on taking care of your business.

What’s The Bottom Line With Hiring Managed IT Support?

After reading this article, you now know the top reasons for hiring a managed IT services provider. While there are many more positives to hiring an MSP, and we offer a comprehensive package of IT solutions and technologies, we know that managed IT support is not right for every organization.

That’s why we’re not here to try to convince you to work with us (or any MSP for that matter). We write articles like this to provide you with information to help you make informed decisions about IT solutions that can help your business.

If you’re just beginning your research into managed IT solutions, this article will help you better understand what managed IT services providers do.

If you’ve decided you do want to hire an external MSP, use our Kelser calculator to get an immediate, accurate estimate of how much managed IT services will cost your business.

If the estimate and services are in line with your IT needs and you’d like to begin a conversation, click the button and one of our IT professionals will reach out promptly for a brief chat to better understand your IT issues and see if we might be a good fit to work with.