How to Identify if You Need Managed IT Services

How to Identify if You Need Managed IT Services

[8 min read]

The realm of managed internet tech and information services, also known as managed IT services, is becoming bigger and bigger. The managed service provider (MSP) business model has become increasingly helpful for small and medium businesses (SMBs) whose products rely on IT. MSPs also greatly help companies grow by providing a myriad of resources, tools, and solutions to supplement a company’s most critical technology service needs.

MSPs are similar to enterprise-scale technology providers that can provide you with staffing, security measures, intranet stability, and other technical resources. If you know your technical goals, choosing a set of managed IT services is as easy as picking a plan and signing up.

If you are considering partnering with an MSP for your business but aren’t sure if managed services will benefit you, we’ve put together a few key points to help you decide.

Managed IT services are great ways to maximize small and medium business (SMB) growth

A Proactive vs. reactive approach to your IT services

In the IT service space, businesses often reactively approach service issues. This means it is more resource-efficient to control and manage IT product problems when something is wrong. Especially for small and medium businesses, constantly devoting resources to issue management isn’t cost-effective or, in some cases, possible at all.

Reactively responding to IT issues can also result in more extended downtimes, scrambling team members, and can leave customers, users, or clients without the products they pay to use.

Using managed services providers can help you and your business actively prevent and prepare for technical issues long before they ever become a concern. One of the best advantages of proactively monitoring and controlling problems is that minor issues hardly have the opportunity to spiral out of control.

Proactive risk management dramatically minimizes the risk that you’ll lose time, money, prospective clients, and resources to unexpected IT dilemmas.

MSPs are perfect fits if you or your business have difficulty scaling your IT infrastructure or dedicate resources to daily necessities like network speed and server dependability. Almost every technology-based company has everyday IT needs, each coming with its own set of potential problems.

MSPs can adapt to whatever product, service, or needs you may have and fix any issues with as little involvement as possible from you and your team. This service approach allows businesses to re-evaluate their needs and periodically adjust their IT services.

Increased service and product reliability

Managed service providers excel at solving some of the most headache-inducing problems businesses encounter. In particular, in-house issues like spotty network coverage, slow servers, malfunctioning workstations, and more are all solvable through outsourcing IT services.

MSPs have advanced technical solutions for almost any obstacle a business may encounter. Managed service providers ensure that everything, both in and out of your office, is functioning optimally.

Ensuring your business has reliable and stable products and services is just the tip of the iceberg. MSPs also implement security solutions that continually detect possible external threats to computer security, disturbances, and vulnerabilities.

Downtime due to technical problems can create a domino-like effect on productivity throughout your entire organization. When your employees can’t access vital tools, customers can’t access your website or application; you begin to notice compounding adverse effects.

If you or your business has ever experienced a chaotic scramble to reconfigure technical products with waiting customers, then you know how important every one of these interactions is. When you have 20 employees waiting in line to get ahold of your technical support team, or 15 more unable to place an order or access their data, only MSPs can truly save the day.

Because MSPs monitor, analyze, identify, and resolve issues before they even happen, you hardly experience downtime or detrimental service issues when working with MSPs. Most MSPs will offer various levels of service level management for you to choose from based on your needs.

MSPs can also backup, protect, and secure critical information. This way, you can implement alternative solutions for avenues for perpetual IT service provisions in the event of a cyber security nightmare. While these may sound like common security tactics, often, rudimentary security measures prevent devastating hacks.

If you are an organization whose customer base relies on dependable, secure, and bug-free products, MPSs can take almost all the stress of maintaining those high standards off your shoulders.

Reducing volatile IT costs and return on investment

Managed service providers help control the countless significant IT expenses and thus bear a high return on investment. If your business’s IT budget includes labor, constant advanced maintenance services, software, network infrastructure, hardware costs, and security expenses, MSPs can take much of that burden off you.

Additionally, managed IT services allow you to dynamically scale and grow as fast as possible, whereas traditional IT teams can’t keep pace with exponential demand. Since MSPs use fixed subscription package costs, you and your businesses can easily project IT expenses and dedicate the saved finances towards other, possibly critical business services.

Managed service providers also give you complete access to technically skilled IT staff at a fraction of the cost of training and hiring your own. MSPs propose an excellent value for small businesses that don’t have an endless budget to recruit the latest and most extraordinary talent.

Suppose your business’s success depends on having professional talent and expensive IT services; however, you’re currently dedicating most of your resources to other critical tasks. In that case, MSPs can provide you with the proper equipment and skill you need. This strategy allows you to maximize your IT budget without sacrificing quality.

Additionally, if you already have trained, professional talent, you can outsource your mundane maintenance tasks, repetitive monitoring, and other monotonous operational duties to MSPs.

MSPs do their best to facilitate a “cut costs, grow stronger” methodology.

Having MSPs take care of recurring security needs allows team members and staff to focus their efforts elsewhere

Strengthen security

An overwhelmed IT staff can sweep patch management under the rug in small and medium businesses and large corporations. This increases your business’ risk of downtime, security loopholes and leads to potential data breaches.

Managed service providers can help you avoid critical security risks by consistently providing your business with the necessary applications, software, and security updates for preventative and reactive countermeasures for your data and products.

Additionally, MSPs supply their clients with trained cyber security professionals who handle issues in various enterprise environments. MSPs sometimes also train talent to target external IT security threats to small and medium businesses.

Some MSPs will also provide services that include disaster recovery teams to help recover, protect, and retrieve data in the event of a critical data breach. If there is one thing SMBs should prioritize, it’s protecting customers’ data and upgrading poor data security systems.

If you own or help operate a small or medium business, utilizing managed service providers is one of the best ways to expedite rapid scalability and growth. The benefits, services, and assistance MSPs provide through managed IT services can often be the headstart businesses need to manage resources and funds.

Businesses that understand the concepts of security threats, challenges, vulnerabilities, and risks can make finding advanced technological solutions from MSPs much easier.

We highly recommend reading our other articles that help detail the services MSPs provide and how to choose the right ones for you!