3 Reasons It’s Time To Outsource IT Support To A Managed Services Provider
Supporting your IT in-house can be expensive, aggravating, and time-consuming. It’s challenging and costly for small businesses to maintain an IT department and stay current with the latest technology. Companies are seeing IT expenses continually increasing on a month to month basis, and training staff to perform IT tasks takes time away from focusing on work that generates revenue. As a result, growing businesses are beginning to take advantage of outsourcing their IT support to a managed services provider.
Not enough small and medium-sized businesses (SMB’s) understand the benefits of outsourcing. Aside from saving a significant amount of money, outsourcing IT support and managed services can provide a number of long-term benefits towards growth, scalability, and security into the future. We’re going to answer the three most important questions that decision-makers have about outsourcing their IT support through managed services.
Can I Handle My IT Support Issues Myself?
The short answer is yes, but whether or not the effort will be efficient and effective will be determined by factors such the size and scope of your company, expertise of your staff, available budget, time, and willingness to risk encountering unexpected roadblocks that may be difficult for a less experienced team to solve. Your business needs to run as efficiently as possible. Organizations that try to do all IT Services in-house themselves can have much higher research, development, and implementation times – all of which increase costs. Some costs cannot be foreseen, such as lost time attempting to solve issues that occur unexpectedly during the course of a project.
Managed service providers have the capability of offering a much larger array of professional services that may not be available to an in-house IT department. Let’s take this a step further. Take a look at the SolarWinds‘ company webpage. SolarWinds is a leading IT management solutions company that offers “value-driven products and tools that solve a broad range of IT management challenges.” Head over to their products page. Here you will see a list of tools and solutions that are commonly used by IT support and managed services. These products include remote support software, server and database maintenance, network management, cloud services, and security solutions. Similar products and services may be available to you through your managed services provider.
Without a solid foundation and working knowledge of the most important facets of today’s technology you risk spending costly hours familiarizing yourself with new tools before your business can implement them, and even more time troubleshooting problems and issues that may occur over time (from “why are my files not syncing?” to “how can I get a signature added to my outgoing emails?”) and roadblocks occur everywhere and always at the most inopportune times.
What Are The Advantages of Managed Services?
A qualified systems administrator can easily cost in the neighborhood of $60k per year in salary alone, and it’s important to keep in mind that qualified does not equal experienced. Very few problems are new to a managed services provider maintaining multiple clients with varying needs of support; while an in-house IT staff may lead an isolated existence regardless of how much they train. If your business plans to pursue a strong online marketing and social media presence then it is even more important for the implementing team to be up-to-date on current trends and analytical changes. A proficient managed services provider will be able to handle all of these for you.
The benefits of implementing fully outsourced managed services include reduced costs, access to external expertise, intellectual property, and improved operational performance. A holistic outsourced model can also allow organizations to better allocate internal resources on strategic projects and core business operations. Businesses have limited resources, and every manager has limited time and attention. Outsourcing can help your company stay focused on your core business and not get distracted by complex IT decisions.
Most small businesses can not afford to match the in-house support services that larger companies maintain. Outsourcing can help small companies act “big” by giving them access to similar technologies used by larger corporations and the expertise that those companies enjoy. Economy of scale and an independent third party managed cost structure can give your company a competitive advantage.
What Are My Options?
So you’ve decided that managed services is the right next step for your growing company. A very important first step as a business is to familiarize yourself with the right questions to ask a managed services provider. Some questions you should ask include:
- – What level of support does each of your managed service plans provide?
- – What kind of backups do you have in place in case of equipment or service failure?
- – What security measures do you have in place?
- – How customizable/adaptable are your managed service plans?
- – How do I access my data on your servers?
Kathleen Fealy, president of KF Multimedia & Web, Inc., wrote a fantastic article entitled “18 Questions to Ask a Potential SEO Consultant.” While the article itself is primarily focused on SEO (Search Engine Optimization, which involves how well your website ranks on search results), the questions themselves are quite adaptable and should be able to be answered by your managed services provider. Kathleen drives home the point very well when she states “I often tell my clients that it’s like hiring a contractor to renovate their kitchen. If you ask enough questions and check references, you’ll learn who is qualified, who will do quality work, and who will leave you with a mess.”
Once you are familiar with the types of questions to ask, the next step is to determine how up to date and involved your managed services provider is with trends and changes in the industry. This is important because IT and managed services is a field that is constantly evolving. Does the company attend seminars? Is there ongoing training for their staff? Do they stay up to date on new technologies and trends? The answer to these questions can reveal quite a lot about a company and how dynamic and responsive they may be to your future needs and requests.
By outsourcing IT support and managed services you can reduce risk, level the playing field, and focus more time on building your business. At Zuma Technology, our core value is simple. We help you meet complex IT requirements while offering investment protection, cost efficiencies, and the scalability to meet your ever-changing business application demands.
We do all this while lowering your overall IT costs. And, because of our billing model, there’s never an incentive for us to sell you products or services that don’t actually improve your effectiveness and bottom line.
We want to hear from you! Have a Question? Feedback? Want to know more? Leave us a comment below, chat with us on Facebook and Twitter, or call us at 1.805.277.9640!
IT security should be at the top of the priorities of any business nowadays. And finding a good company who can handle all tasks without fail and manage this efficiently is a good way to ensure this.Thanks for the good read!
Hello Theodore!
Thank you for the comment! You took the words right out of my mouth!
So many company’s in the news about being hacked or data stolen in the last several years, cybersecurity should be a top priority for company security. Having a professional managed service provider assist with these tasks will only help customers data become even more secure.
I liked what you said about having an outsourced managed IT service will cut costs. My friend has been struggling with trying to figure out how it’s going to work with hiring some people for her company since she really needs an IT department. I think that it would be good for her to look into something like this and see if it works out for her financial situation.
Thank you for the comment Gerty! Agreed! The cost of outsourcing an IT department is a smart economic decision. Imagine having an IT staff that consistently has been to be trained or taught new skills, paying for employee healthcare and other external costs. We feel the most sensible solution for any business is to outsource all managed IT services for economic and business growth!
My brother runs a small business and he is thinking about hiring an IT consulting service to handle all of the network updates and issues for the company. You make a great point that outsourcing IT services actually saves money and allows you to focus on other aspects of the business operation so that my brother can spend his time growing the business. Also, I will make sure to tell my brother to ask about the security measures the IT company has because this will help him decide which consulting service will be best.
Hi Rosie!
You took the words right out of our mouths! Network security has become a hot topic among businesses of all sizes. We’ve implemented enterprise level security for SMBs to help deter potential threats. It allows our customer and us sleep better at night. Glad to hear your brother is using a managed IT service provider for his business. He’ll see the value of IT support as his business will run much smoother on the technical side.
great post thanks for sharing
You’re welcome Versa IT! How’s the Managed Services treating you these days?
This last year was very good. However, we are seeing a turn in the economy and sales have been slow the last few months.
One of my friends is majoring in business, so he’s been wanting to learn more about outsourcing. It’s so cool that outsourcing your IT support can help you get expertise without spending money to recruit and train technicians. Thanks so much for sharing the benefits one gains from outsourcing their IT support.
You’re very welcome Taylor! Good luck to your friend!
I like how you said that IT services are able to provide small businesses with security solutions. These days with cyber scams becoming prevalent, it’s crucial to protect your information, especially a small business, in order to ensure ownership of your products and grow as a company. My friend owns a business, and isn’t sure how he will manage his employees and his new company, as well as the software and data systems. I’ll have to recommend that he find a reliable IT support service, that security will be taken care of, while he can focus on running his company and helping it develop.
Hello Olivia!
You took the words right out of my mouth! We know how crucial it is for the business owner to focus on generating revenue while we focus on the IT aspect of the business.
My sister wants to start her own business, and I suggested she look into out sourcing for the IT department. Your article had some great points about why this would be a great idea, and I liked how you said to ask a potential service things like “How to access data on your servers?” or “What security measures do you have in place?” Thanks; I’ll share this with my sister and hopefully she’ll consider outsourcing IT for her future business.
Thank you Jocelyn! Good luck to your sister’s business. I promise she won’t regret it!
One of my friends is thinking of starting a business once he graduates; if he does, he will probably need help with IT issues. It was helpful when you said that managed IT services can supply one with a team of trained individuals. My friend could really benefit from reading this article, so thank you for sharing it.
Thank you Bethany for the comment! Good luck to your friend with their IT business.
Thanks for mentioning that outsourcing your IT support will help you refocus your limited resources to the core functions of your business. The company I work for has been having lots of technical problems lately, and it’s caused us to fall behind in other, more important areas. I’ll pass along the info you shared here and suggest we refocus by outsourcing our IT support.
Thanks for explaining why it could be good to outsource IT support. It’s good to know that this could be a good way to access external expertise. This seems really important especially if that expertise can help a company work efficiently regularly.
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It’s great that you mentioned that outsourcing a managed IT service could help small companies compete with bigger ones since they would be able to use similar technologies. My sister plans on starting her own marketing firm in town soon. I’ll share this piece of information with her because it would be helpful for her business. Thanks.