You’ve probably heard the term IT MSP floating around but your not exactly sure if partnering up with one is right for you and your business? We’re here to tell you that both big and small organizations can benefit from an IT Managed Services Provider.
Managed Service Provider for Small to Medium (SMB) sized businesses
For the small businesses that do not already have a dedicated IT staff or those who have someone in the office that is ‘pretty technical, but their job is actually the admin.’ The choice is usually easy and made quick – they go with an MSP for many different reasons.
1. Consistent Support at Any Level
The business gains security from knowing that assistance is always a simple, quick help desk ticket away. The MSP is bound by a Service Level Agreement (SLA), which requires they respond to and resolve issues within a designated time-frame based on the urgency, not complexity of the issue.
2. Cost Effectiveness
The business’ budgets tend to agree more with teaming up with an MSP than hiring their own full-time (or even part-time) IT staff. The majority of MSPs offer plans and custom-tailored solutions to meet a client’s unique needs and budgetary concerns. The client gets the full benefit of a complete IT staff, with the professional expertise and support of a team of technicians, often for a smaller investment than the salary and benefits of one fully qualified IT staff member.
3. Ongoing Monitoring, Maintenance & Backup
If a major system crash happens, regardless of the amount of manpower available, it’s only possible to recover what’s been saved and backed up. That’s where the preventative maintenance is extremely critical to consider and be mindful about, not only does that safeguard important mission-critical data and systems, but true proactive and on-going maintenance will help identify failures before they happen. Routine testing of the backup systems and disaster recovery are often neglected by over-worked, larger IT departments, too, not just the single IT employee, or those without any internal IT staff at all.
Unfortunately, that’s a risk all-too-many businesses take until it’s too late. Many organizations establish a relationship with an MSP after they’ve been struck with a large downtime event either as a result of human error or malicious attack. I’ve never known one entity to be struck with a large downtime event more than once without changing their approach to IT support and management. Once is enough for them to feel the pain of being down, both physically and financially, and they take the matter seriously.
Managed Service Provider for larger Enterprise level businesses
For the larger business that may already have an internal IT staff, or a team of dedicated IT people the questions and concerns, although often similar, differ in some ways from the concerns of smaller businesses. MSP’s for larger companies are typically used to supplement an internal team so full-time employees can focus on longer-term company goals and drive future revenue.
Large businesses with an internal IT department that has identified cost savings in outsourcing specific IT department components like network monitoring and administration, data backups and disaster recovery, or helpdesk support.
Businesses that cannot tolerate downtime and rely on their IT systems to generate revenue.
1. Scalable Change & Ongoing Maintenance
Larger corporations require the ability to adopt changes at scale. As the business changes and evolves, the IT department must remain flexible, which tends to increase their workload as they try to maintain day-to-day functions while reacting to the ebb and flow of the business. Often the ability to acquire extra IT staff to accommodate changes just isn’t feasible.
It’s almost always guaranteed that when an IT department gets stretched thin, maintenance of the networks, servers, and data is often affected as a result of said neglect. If technicians are busy with upgrades, fixing failed devices, or simply just working with end-users, they don’t have the time to ensure systems are running smoothly. What IT departments lack the bandwidth to proactively monitor and address issues before they turn into failures, data loss, or downtime – negative things that can and will affect the business’ revenue. Having the right team working on your issues, strategically planning every aspect, and working with you toward goals for in the future will help ensure your business stays running flawlessly and profitable.
2. Diversity of Skill Sets
Large corporations have diverse needs and greatly benefit from access to diverse and qualified expertise. Internal IT staff members typically focus on one or a select few specialties. More than one IT staff member may offer some diversity, but not as much as one may think. When a technician is surrounded and most often works on the same systems day-in-and-day-out, they almost are guaranteed to not think as ‘out of the box’ when addressing issues or implementing solutions. True diversity of skill and related experience is found in technicians that deal with multiple systems in multiple configurations and locales regularly. They see how different systems interact and the most effective and securest ways to implement new ideas and projects. These are approaches that veteran technicians may not realize if they have been intertwined in the same environment for the last five, ten, or more years.
3. Fear From Internal IT Staff
Existing IT staff often experience negative emotions when the management of a large company considers teaming up with a managed service provider or outsourced IT vendor. Commonly, a barrier in relationships with MSPs and businesses that could benefit from their services is the internal IT staff who may worry about their own job security. But the reality of this is that it’s simply not true. Your organization is probably just in it’s growing phase and adding an outsourced MSP can actually offer greater job satisfaction to your current internal staff by freeing up their time to focus on specific line-of-business functions.
This can create a great partnership between internal IT staff and the MSP which allows everyone to utilize their greatest strengths offering the greatest benefit and return on investment to the business.
