“An ounce of prevention is better than one pound of a cure” – Benjamin Franklin
Outsourcing your day-to-day IT user support by engaging a Managed Services Provider (or MSP) is a smart and cost-effective choice, particularly when you select the right MSP for your business. By paying a monthly fee for IT support, you can not only attain certainty over future IT costs, but also many more benefits from proactive monitoring of your users, IT infrastructure, workstations and other day-to-day business essentials.
An MSP can free up time for your team to focus on core business projects, while providing you with peace of mind that business as usual continues smoothly under the watchful eye of a 24x7 outsources monitoring and management arrangement.
The pinnacle outcome of having the right MSP partnership is that you can identify ongoing challenges beyond the day-to-day. Done right, a mutually beneficial MSP partnership will identify and address core operational issues and suggest alternatives, rather than placing a bandaid fix.This is where identifying the right partner for their expertise becomes vital.
In this article, we will go through the top 5 benefits of outsourcing your IT needs to a Managed Service Provider, and what to look for when identifying the right partner for you.
1. Predict your future IT costs
This is usually the number one reason most organisations consider outsourcing IT managed services. Costs can be highly unpredictable when you manage IT in-house. Not only do organisations need to stay abreast of the ever-changing requirements for networks, storage and security, they must also attract, onboard, train andretain staff. Outsourcing foundational services such as user support, incident management, change management, security patching and vendor management bundlesup all these into a single fixed monthly payment. The benefit is being able to predict future costs of IT over a contract term and a predictable outcome interms of keeping IT issues running smoothly.
2. Improve your compliance and security
Staying abreast of changes in privacy, data and security legislation is becoming more complex. Keeping updated on what your business needs to do in order to comply can be costly as it requires implementing and maintaining strict security infrastructure as well as keeping the entire organisation trained and updated on stringent processes. It is also becoming a greater risk factor to more businesses, as the government expands its definition of critical infrastructure and the organisations that need to comply. Compliance and security measures are important, but pull your team’s focus away from the core business. An MSP partnership with strong credentials in security management and updates reduces cost of compliance while reducing your exposure. You can rest assured the basics are covered, such as ensuring security software is up-to-date, and ensuring patch management is done on a regular basis. They will also look at specific regulations that apply to your business.
3. Refocus your IT staff on core business goals
By freeing uptime and resources from the day-to-day IT requirements, an MSP will allow you to refocus your IT staff on more strategic projects that support the core business needs. Staying ahead of your competitors is now directly related to keeping pace with the expectations of the modern customer. This means digital transformation projects are now business critical. Innovation projects require big picture thinking, which is impossible to achieve with ever-present demands of the IT network and infrastructure.
4. Fix the core problem, not just the symptoms
With the pool of IT talent shrinking and the greater number of systems to manage, it’s little wonder that most in-house support teams are overwhelmed by the sheer volume and repetitious nature of their support tickets. By contrast, a qualified MSP will take a proactive approach and look for commonalities that can be solved at the core problem, rather than continue addressing the symptoms. At Byte, our MSP team is well known for delivering proactive solutions, not just reacting to incidents.
5. Identify future needs while maintaining continuity of present ones
The “new normal” of the virtual, hybrid work landscape has introduced new challenges. As your infrastructure complexity increases, so do expectations from the business: your team is not only expected to deliver outstanding support, but also to drive innovation with technology.
By engaging an MSP, you can keep abreast of the daily tasks and tickets to maintain, changes and upgrades, keep on top of documentation and identify areas for improvement. You can also rest assured that any knowledge gaps will be addressed and transferred through implementation of standard procedures and will document your environment and changes along the way, ensuring continuity.
Why Byte Managed Services?
It can be challenging for in-house IT teams to handover the reins of the day-to-day support to an outside provider. And for good reason! IT is the heart of business these days, so visibility over infrastructure is a critical function. Making the decision to outsource comes down to one thing – trust.
When you evaluate your future MSPs, you need to ask the right questions to get a good insight into their ability to reliably and consistently deliver results that your business needs to ensure its future.
At Byte, we’ve developed a reputation for seamlessly integrating with your business in varying capacities. Our managed services solution provides you with tiered options for IT service management and can scale as you do.
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