The concept of managed IT isn’t new, but it may still confuse some business owners. One reason for this comes from a lack of understanding regarding the benefits it can provide, particularly to small businesses. Companies that rely heavily on minimizing their expenses can undervalue outsourcing and prefer developing in-house solutions.
Outsourcing Makes Sense
In-house solutions aren’t always the most efficient or budget-friendly. In reality, outsourcing makes more sense for many companies, regardless of size, goals, and other considerations. Managed IT services offer a series of advantages to businesses trying to scale up while improving their workflow and cash flow.
Increase IT Productivity
No matter how little technology a business uses, its network and infrastructure require continuous support and monitoring. Many business owners believe this is possible with a few in-house specialists. But not everyone can work 24/7, through weekends, and during the holidays. It’s important to factor in different time zones and other issues as well.
When building an in-house IT team, full-time, around-the-clock monitoring comes with high costs. Even if companies can hire the right experts, the investment may take away from future growth projects.
Sometimes strategic initiatives and innovation projects get placed on the back burner.
Some companies try to avoid this by promoting in-house or assigning additional responsibilities to people without the proper experience. That can make things even worse. Productivity instantly suffers, and high-value tasks don’t get the attention they require.
But managed IT services can easily provide the answer. Service providers can offer sustained 24/7 coverage for devices and networks. They take the weight of IT responsibility off everyone else’s shoulders and enable companies and their employees to maintain efficient, balanced workloads.
Service providers employ professional experts. IT issues don’t take forever to resolve or rely on temporary or suboptimal solutions.
The following three perks are among the most important that come from partnering with the right services provider.
Premium Tools
Infrastructure monitoring isn’t cheap, which is why many businesses don’t use the correct tools for the job. Having the best tools doesn’t mean much if the implementation is off. Creating a robust IT infrastructure monitoring and intervention system doesn’t happen overnight.
It’s not easy, cheap, or intuitive to complete the process.
Managed IT services offer an alternative. Working with a service provider means business owners don’t have to worry about the cost of ownership. The smallest company can afford premium infrastructure tools, from security software to cloud platforms to CRMs and other digital solutions.
They may use them on an as-needed basis or however the contract is structured with the managed IT services provider. Businesses don’t need to hire the best talent on the market for implementation, monitoring, and management. Those activities can easily be outsourced to the right specialist team.
Preventing Instead of Reacting
Having a reactive approach to IT problems isn’t ideal. Imagine the difficulties of implementing a disaster recovery plan after a successful hack that corrupted confidential or proprietary information. Even the most efficient recovery plan still involves complex logistics. There’s also the matter of suffering from some downtime that prevents normal business operations. And let’s not forget the damage to a company’s reputation with the public and their stakeholders when a data breach or ransomware attack occurs.
A recovery plan is mandatory for every company. It’s better to prevent cybercrime in the first place than to react after the damage has been done. Prevention is perhaps one of the most significant advantages of managed IT services.
Active monitoring enables IT support teams to assess and predict challenges or attacks. Instead of waiting for something to happen, an experienced team can stop threats in their tracks.
Consider tasks like patching, upgrading, and making small adjustments to IT infrastructure. Comprehensive monitoring allows teams to see everything and intervene at the opportune moment. This proactive approach prevents vulnerabilities from getting out of hand or becoming unfixable.
Your managed IT team helps mitigate any potential risk from equipment failure, hacks, incompatible upgrades, human error, outages, etc.
Easier Expense Management
It’s hard to prepare for an IT emergency without knowing its scope, damage, and timing. Business owners don’t always understand what they need or when. The whole concept of creating an IT budget seems chaotic. There are too many moving parts and variables.
But not with managed IT. Managed services are generally categorized as predictable expenditures. Service providers can have monthly or yearly fees structured on various levels depending on the service package.
Even better, service providers tend to exercise transparency regarding their services. Some even offer personalized solutions. And the benefits here are massive.
Understanding the payment structure is key to creating accurate budget forecasts and learning how IT expenses affect a company’s bottom line. Business owners can prepare for the worst, whatever that is in their particular niche, without risking negative cash flow.
Companies can choose how much to spend based solely on their needs. They don’t have to buy software solutions they won’t use, unnecessary premium licenses, etc. Everything has a clear cost and explanation.
Managed IT Is the Path to Efficiency
A business owner investing in managed IT is an entrepreneur who can significantly improve all areas of their company. Information technology is a massive part of every business. Even mom-and-pop retail stores rely on some IT solutions to reach customers, make money, and support business continuity.
But information technology is a sketchy area you can’t navigate without experience. It takes the right experts to identify, implement, and manage the correct tools to help a company achieve its goals. Managed IT services offer an easy way out for any business without an internal IT department or the means to build one from scratch.
If you want scalable IT solutions, contact KDI. Our team caters to Philadelphia, eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware businesses.