
With operating costs constantly increasing, it’s often diligent to look at new approaches to all aspects of your day-to-day business. It’s not uncommon to feel like it’s hard to keep your business growing when cashflow is limited, but you may be surprised by where you can both make savings and expand operations.
A prime example of this in your IT. In fact – if you’re not even as far as having a dedicated IT department, it might be prudent to consider the alternatives. It’s fair to say that IT support can be one of the biggest expenses any small company faces, so, if that’s what’s caused you to hold off, you’ll be encouraged by just how quickly and cost effectively you can gain an IT department without taking on a single member of staff.
Managed Service Providers (MSPs) work as a remote IT department, with many processes being automatically monitored and work actioned just as quickly as if they were in house, but without the associated expenses.
Guaranteed service level agreements
Your relationship with an MSP starts with a sit down to discuss a service level agreement (SLA) between you and your provider. This is a working contract that outlines the services you’ll get in return for a fixed monthly cost.
As so many businesses are bespoke, so are many SLAs – there’s rarely a one size fits all solution. This works out in your benefit – you’ll only agree to services that you’re in need of and you may well learn of some that are actually vital if you want to make significant steps forward in productivity.
No recruitment, no training
There’s a major time and money implication thatcomes staff management, from recruitment through to training, holidays and so forth. What can already be an incredibly expensive exercise for a smaller business doesn’t guarantee results when trying to find the right person for the job. When you do find the ideal candidate, having them as an employee comes with a whole spectrum of costs beyond just paying them a wage.
This is yet another area that you don’t have to pay any attention to when using an MSP. You’ll add in the experts working for your MSP and you have the benefits of a large team of operatives without any of the commitment you would expect.
Training is often a financial minefield too – how do you identify which issues should be taught proactively? Months of training can be a huge financial burden, and perhaps more importantly, you can only expect so much knowledge retention of your staff. It’s fair to say it’s pretty unfair to expect them to be an expert in any field you choose, even with quality training.
Experience plus rapid scalability
Expanding your IT infrastructure is traditionally a very involved experience, and therefore involves a lot of research – or, worse yet, trial and error. Everything from physical deployment to optimising software for your environment takes a lot of work to make sure everything’s working properly, and your IT team won’t be inundated with questions.
When you employ the services of a managed IT provider, you’re often inviting someone into your business who has combined decades of experience. Not only will they often have an immediate answer, but they’ll be able to call in the correct resources if they don’t, without you having to lift a finger.
Being able to take advantage of this knowledge means you can action major changes or implementations simply and quickly with effective results and very little stress.
It could be said that the best way to use an MSP is to compliment your small 1 or 2-person IT team. In some ways, the MSP is an expansion to your team, albeit one that is likely to be based elsewhere. The aspects of an IT team that are often very expensive – for instance, employing enough people to remain hands on with your system 24 hours a day – can be absorbed by an MSP that simply blends your requirement into the role of someone who’s already up and monitoring other client’s networks. This type of ‘hands off’ support can be incredible effective when tied into an SD WAN system that allows simple system management from anywhere around the globe!
Proactive Support
Security is a huge part of modern IT – the impact of a security breach can be devastating. Since your staff can be spending lots of time fire-fighting – how are they supposed to undercover holes in your system whilst meeting all the other requirements of their job? Most smaller, in-house departments have to learn these things ‘as required’ – you can’t feasibly expect in-house staff to dedicate the same resources and MSP can.
Because MSPs often use their own custom system, or at least an adapted version of a tried and tested solution who they have experts to administrate, they’re in a position of being able to test for exploits and preemptively implement fixes before anything bad ever happens for all clients they serve. This leads to an incredible stable and reliable platform which hits 99.9% uptime in many cases. You often won’t know about any security issues till after they’ve been fixed, if at all.
Predictable Outlay
With an MSP, you’ll have a working idea of monthly costs. Cashflow is of utmost importance to a working business and being able to avoid financial surprises is a huge benefit. What’s more, any time you decide to make changes that sits outside the scope of your SLA, you’ll likely to be given itemised quotes in advance that allow you to manage your spend.
It’s in this ‘pay for what you need’ model that MSPs really pay off for a business. Costs are predictable, and their availability doesn’t waiver. You can rely on them 24/7 and truly plan ahead for when things are their most comfortable.
An MSP could save you significant money on a yearly basis whilst enabling your business to have a comprehensive IT system that’s way beyond what you currently have, and quite possibly way beyond what you think you could feasibly afford were outsourcing not an option.