One approach to cutting technology costs while maximizing their value and improving IT efficiencies is outsourcing your IT support and network security to a trusted Managed Services Provider (MSP). For a flat monthly fee, you get access to a team of experienced technicians to manage, monitor, and resolve problems across systems and business processes.
The benefits of this kind of outsourcing—or what we call “mindful IT”—are immediate and significant. You get the gift of time to really focus on what your business does for a living. You also get to feel the thrill of avoidance ---
- Avoid the costs associated with hiring.
- Avoid the time and money spent training your own IT department.
While cost reduction is central to the MSP advantage, the good news is that there are three steps you can take to really turbo-charge your ROI.
First | Hand-Off Vendor Management
You probably have IT vendors; maybe you have multiple IT vendors. One from Microsoft to help with Office 365, another who shows up with a new desktop after an old one spits the bit, and yet another one who…well, you get the idea. This is workable in theory, but once you do the math behind this approach, it’s downright scary.
Count up the number of IT vendors your company works with and how many hours your employees spend managing those relationships every month. Now, multiply this number by your average employee’s hourly rate.
Like we said, scary.
Alternatively, when you task your MSP with the type of work we’ve just referred to, you’ve just reclaimed those hours. Everything from warranty claims to hardware support becomes someone else’s problem and your employees are freed up to work on higher-value tasks.
Second | Make Time for Proactive IT Management
Proactive maintenance is a beautiful (albeit not-so-sexy) thing. While most MSPs will reduce technology hiccups with proactive maintenance, the more you lean into this, the more peace of mind you'll find. Making time for mindful IT
- Installing software patches,
- Holding cybersecurity training events,
- Updating your disaster recovery plan,
- And so much more
can pay major dividends. Consider, for example, businesses impacted by the WannaCry ransomware attacks. If any of those businesses had installed the Window's update within three months before the attack, they would have been totally safe. That attack originally occurred in 2017 but was resurrected just last year at the height of the pandemic.
In this case, having proactive maintenance in place would have saved these companies from becoming victims.
Third | Your MSP is Part of Your Team
Managed IT services were born because the first generation of “break/fix” contractors continually came up short. Since these contractors were primarily concerned with fixing problems in the here-and-now, they weren't knowledgeable about your business or the people who keep it running. While this support approach may work for small or young businesses, it won’t count for much if you’re struggling with IT issues rooted deeply in your processes.
Alternatively, MSPs perform even better when they have a clear understanding of how your office operates. Charles IT’s Unlimited IT Support plan comes with a dedicated technician for this in particular. Broadly speaking, by getting to know your business needs, the length of downtime events can be dramatically reduced. For example, say your email server goes down; with an MSP at your disposal, there’s no time wasted in determining which hardware and software you’re using because your designated technician already knows.
We like to call it the Five Nines Promise—99.999% uptime. We also call it the Olympus of Uptime. (Frankly, nobody else calls it that—yet—but we’re working on it.) The point is, that you can realize even more value out of an MSP by considering their technicians as part of your team. The more you collaborate with your MSP, the more they’re in the loop, and the faster they can resolve issues and implement revenue-generating IT upgrades.
Crunch all the numbers—starting with .001%
Once you do, you’ll see that having an outsourced IT support team more than justifies its flat monthly service fee. With Charles IT, your bill is tied directly to the size and complexity of your technology infrastructure. This means you’ll always know exactly how much it costs to keep downtime below .001%, maintain cutting-edge cybersecurity, and grow your company.
Want to learn more about the benefits of hiring an MSP? We'd love to talk with you, so give us a call today and we’ll have our IT experts walk you through your first assessment.
Oh, and Namaste.
Editor's Note: This post was originally published in May of 2019 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.
