In the past, many small and medium-sized business owners may have assumed that managed IT services were only for larger enterprise companies and corporations.
With constant market shifts and rapid advances in technology, however, a growing number of businesses are turning to managed IT service providers (MSPs) as a cost-effective way to solve their IT problems and to help them succeed.
Related Article: How Can Managed IT Services Drive Your Digital Transformation?
In this article, we’ll examine six reasons more businesses like yours are turning to managed IT support.
After reading this article, you’ll have a better understanding of how managed IT services can help you meet your current IT challenges and leverage your technology to gain a competitive advantage.
In today's fast-changing digital landscape, small and medium-sized companies are increasingly recognizing the value of managed IT services.
While some SMBs have one or two service technicians or engineers on staff to handle their day-to-day IT issues, others use a more casual break-fix approach.
These companies call in the same IT repair tech they've relied on for years to troubleshoot their technology issues as they pop up.
So, what are some real-world examples of when managed IT services might be a more effective solution for your business?
Scenario: You plan to hire in-house IT professionals to handle both your internal IT infrastructure and your public-facing IT issues to effectively communicate and transact with vendors, customers, partners, and others.
How much would it cost you to hire your own IT team to handle your ongoing IT maintenance and management, ensure regulatory compliance, and develop a strategic IT plan that aligns with your long-term business goals?
How will you know if the work your new team does or the technology they install follows best practices or is even the right option for your business?
What happens if one of your IT professionals goes on vacation or leaves the company? Do you have someone else in-house with similar expertise and the time to fill in, while still handling their own job responsibilities?
With managed IT services, you get a comprehensive stack of network, data, device, and security management tools along with a team of expert IT professionals to keep your business humming—all at a predictable monthly cost.
So, you could think of it like a utility bill or any other essential monthly business expense.
Scenario: We’ve been experiencing spotty network connectivity and slow processing speeds. My staff is growing increasingly frustrated by the length of time it’s taking them to complete what normally should be routine tasks.
A managed IT services company can establish a system to gain complete visibility into your IT network with continuous network monitoring.
This practice tracks your network performance, keeping a watchful eye out for issues such as unusual network traffic, device configuration problems, DNS issues, or slow Wi-Fi.
With this solution in place, your managed IT provider can ensure that your IT environment is running smoothly and efficiently, so that you can focus on running your business.
Scenario: I think I’ve been hacked, and I don’t know where to start!
If you’ve been in this predicament or if fears of being in such a situation keep you awake at night, then managed IT can help bring you some peace of mind.
A top reason more small and medium-sized businesses are using managed IT services is to strengthen their organization’s defenses against threats to safeguard their network and sensitive information.
Related Article: Do I Need A Managed IT Service Provider To Meet CMMC Requirements?
MSPs assess your entire IT environment for possible vulnerabilities and security gaps. They implement robust cybersecurity measures, ensuring you have the latest software, equipment, practices, policies, and employee security awareness training to future-proof your business.
Scenario: We’re a start-up business relying on pending federal funding, but we need to have all of these NIST controls in place before we can receive the funds, and we don’t know what to do.
Compliance is a huge challenge for SMBs because most are not aware of the ever-changing federal and state cybersecurity and privacy laws.
Related Article: How Zero Trust Can Streamline NIST & CMMC Compliance For Your Business
At the same time, insurance companies are also ramping up their cybersecurity requirements for businesses to try to stem the tide of rising cybersecurity incidents like phishing attacks and data breaches.
That’s why more organizations are choosing to outsource their IT. An MSP's team of knowledgeable IT and cybersecurity professionals can implement the right security measures to not only get you compliant but also ensure that your business stays compliant.
Scenario: I’m not currently experiencing any significant IT problems, but I realize that my IT equipment is getting old. I don’t know when they need to be replaced, and I’m not even sure if they’re still under warranty.
If you’re like many other small and medium-sized business owners, you don’t know the typical lifespan of your business technology.
An MSP can perform a complete audit of your IT infrastructure to help you identify and categorize what you have.
From there, an MSP will know the end-of-life dates for each piece of equipment and offer strategic planning and budgeting guidance for future IT investments in line with your long-term business goals.
Related Article: Device Management: Why You Need A Plan To Replace Your Business Tech
Managed IT providers can also make sure that any sensitive data stored on the devices is properly removed before being disposed, following regulatory guidelines.
Scenario: Your business provides accounting services to companies and individuals, and your server crashes on April 14. How are you going to file all of your clients’ tax returns by tax day?
Perhaps this illustration may seem overly dramatic, but it’s a real-life example of how an IT emergency can derail your business.
How long could your business withstand downtime because of equipment failure, internet outage, natural disaster, data breach or other cyberattack before your business is back up and running? A month? A week? A day?
How much data could you afford to lose while your operations are at a standstill? The technical term for this is recovery point objective or RPO.
For some businesses, without the ability to close sales, even a few hours of downtime can put a major dent in their profits.
Businesses are increasingly turning to MSPs to provide strategic business continuity and disaster recovery planning to ensure that they can quickly recover if disaster strikes.
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Since MSPs work to develop a deep understanding of your business, they can use that insight to determine your recovery point objective (RPO) for data loss during a disaster as well as your time limit for remediation and recovery following a disaster, or your recovery time objective (RTO).
With MSP support, you can breathe easier knowing that you not only have the necessary data backups, but that those backups will be available and readily accessible when you need them.
Many small and medium-sized businesses struggle with costly IT issues, cybersecurity threats, and outdated technology, yet hiring a full in-house IT team is out of reach.
By outsourcing their IT management, a growing number of SMBs are realizing they can save themselves the time, resources, and headaches that come with trying to do it all themselves.
After reading this article, you now know some of the key reasons small and medium-sized companies are increasingly partnering with MSPs to capitalize on the increased cost efficiency, scalability, enhanced cybersecurity, and employee productivity that managed IT services offers.
If you have a limited internal IT team, or don’t have any IT staff at all, you may be wondering if hiring an MSP is worth it.
Find out the 8 criteria you should use to evaluate MSP providers here. Read this article to discover 10 benefits of outsourcing your IT to an MSP.
Learn How Can Managed IT Services Drive Your Digital Transformation?
Want to avoid common pitfalls in a client-MSP relationship, read 5 Common Mistakes When Using Managed IT Support—And How To Fix Them.
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