As you consider your business IT management options, you might wonder about the advantages of managed IT services. How does it compare to other IT support options? Is it a fit for your organization? In this article, we’ll explore why managed services may be the best fit for your business.
First, what are “managed IT services?” Simply put, it is where you outsource some or all of your IT management to a Managed Service Provider (MSP) vendor. MSPs come in all shapes and sizes. For this article, we’ll focus on the advantages of working with what’s known as a “high-maturity MSP.”
High-maturity MSPs offer the scale and best practices of an enterprise-class IT department on a small business budget. Your users gain access to the security, stability, support, and other resources typically associated with a much larger company.
The three most common reasons that an organization like yours might consider managed IT services are:
When your users encounter an IT issue or have a question, it represents a disruption to their productivity. MSPs implement an IT management model that proactively limits the frequency and scope of potential issues. They constantly align your IT systems to hundreds of best practices for performance, reliability, availability, and scalability. Comparatively, internal IT teams and lower-maturity MSPs often don’t know these best practices and lack the time or discipline to consistently implement them.
When issues or questions arise, these MSPs also have a team of helpdesk experts waiting to answer your call. Through the experience gained from working on thousands of past issues, their support professionals can quickly identify and resolve root causes. Fewer issues – faster response. It all translates into higher efficiency for your team.
Your risk and the potential impact of cyber threats has never been higher. New threats and risk mitigation tactics emerge almost weekly. It’s crucial to have a strong and evolving defense system.
MSPs have the resources and capacity to keep up with this ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. Their security experts monitor the threats and stay current on the latest best practices. Using an industry-standard cybersecurity framework like the CIS Controls, they can measure, manage, and lower your risk. This enables you to make informed decisions regarding security policies, disaster recovery plans, business continuity options, and cyber liability insurance.
While it's impossible for an MSP to guarantee that your organization won't be hacked, they do possess a level of focus and discipline that may be challenging for an internal IT team or a less experienced MSP to match. By working with a highly experienced MSP, you can rest assured that you have taken prudent precautions to protect your organization.
From a cost-per-user perspective, MSPs are more cost-effective than developing similar capabilities in-house. Catering to thousands of users, their size and scale allow them to have specialized professionals and tools that a small internal IT team can’t replicate. For a fixed monthly price, you get an entire IT department with specialized resources in areas like cyber security, automation, networking, server management, and help desk support.
MSPs also help you establish a predictable budget and avoid surprise expenses through their virtual Chief Information Officer (vCIO) role. The vCIO is a strategic partner that aligns your technology roadmap with your business’ challenges and opportunities. Coupled with the MSP’s focus on issue prevention and a strong cyber defense framework, this roadmap creates fiscal stability and a foundation for future success.
High-maturity MSPs typically offer two engagement models – fully managed and co-managed. In a fully managed model, the MSP delivers a turnkey IT department and assumes responsibility for all aspects of your IT management. In a co-managed model, your internal IT team and the MSP partner manage your environment. The right model for you will depend on the size of your organization and the complexity of your IT environment.
When considering the efficiency, security, and cost advantages listed above, if you have fewer than 150 users, the fully managed, turnkey model is the way to go. A one or two-person internal team can’t match the capabilities and risk management benefits of an MSP. If you have an employee who wears multiple hats (e.g., an accountant who manages your IT), they can’t begin to keep up with the emerging threats and security best practices. And, even if you can hire a jack-of-all-trades person, good luck keeping them in this competitive labor market.
Once you cross the 150-user threshold, the co-managed IT model might begin to make sense. With co-managed, your internal IT resources focus on one of two areas. Either they are a lower-level resource that takes on the first line of end-user technical support, or they are a high-level resource that functions more in a business enablement role. By business enablement, we mean that they do things like data analysis and process engineering to maximize the use of your line of business software. It’s really just an add-on to the same services that your MSP provides under the fully managed model.
If you're considering the benefits of managed IT support, you now know that improving efficiency, enhancing security, and reducing costs are all important factors to consider. However, the most important thing to focus on is whether your IT investment is driving real business outcomes. If you've reached this far in the article, you probably understand how critical IT is to your organization and that you're already investing a significant amount in it. Therefore, it's essential to evaluate the return on your investment and how you're measuring it.
IT should be a lever that helps you lower operating costs and unlock new revenue potential. A managed IT partner can transform concepts like business innovation and increasing employee leverage into a repeatable process. They will assist you in identifying opportunities to optimize your existing investments, enabling you to achieve more with less.
EpiOn is a high-maturity MSP focused on delivering Measurably Better IT. Serving Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, and points in between. Our approach is built around the Measurably Better ITTM Framework that empowers innovative business leaders with simple metrics to help reduce risk, increase security, improve productivity, and fully leverage their IT investment. We believe that IT should be all about helping you achieve an Outcome with clear metrics and a shared definition of success. We specialize in full-service outsourced IT as well as co-managed IT. We also excel in cyber security, cloud solutions, and voice-over-IP for an additional layer of security. Our customer-focused framework strives to understand the unique needs and challenges of each client in order to provide the solution that’s best for them. Our framework and commitment are why we consistently rank among the top IT firms in the world.