If you’re an SME or start-up that wants to grow, your tech can be your wingman or a source of woe.
Particularly if your business has grown a lot in a short amount of time, it’s common to find that your starter IT system no longer does what you need it to. This leads to more and more resources being used to paper over the cracks.
The modern solution to this problem is a Managed Service Provider (MSP). An MSP isn’t like old-school IT support services. Instead, they monitor and manage your computer systems and help your tech grow as your business does.
More cost-effective than an internal IT team and more proactive than any IT support service, Managed Services are the way the forward-thinking businesses of today ensure they’re ready to reach the next level.
Why use a managed service for your IT?
1) Be proactive not reactive
IT support services of the past operated a “fix it when it breaks” approach. They were reactive. They came into deal with problems as and when they arose.
A managed service is different. An MSP is proactive. It’s their job to monitor, identify and fix issues before they ever become problems that will affect your business’s daily operations.
With a properly managed, well-maintained computer network, your business is always going to be able to maximise productivity. You will also be ready to evolve as you grow and adapt to other changing circumstances later on.
2) Make your tech grow as your business does
How do you see your business in five or ten years’ time? If the answer is bigger than you are now, your Managed Service Provider is also the solution to making sure your tech will do what you need it to do when the time comes.
Not only is a managed service monitoring your technology in the here and now, if they’re anything like Dial A Geek, you can also have them create IT roadmaps that will let you leverage your tech to get your business what it needs as you grow.
3) Rely on more cost-effective expertise
Having an in-house IT team will cost you on at least three levels:
- Staff salaries and holiday cover – by contrast, an MSP provides all of the IT support you will ever need at a fraction of the cost of an entire in-house team’s worth of salaries.
- Constant re-training costs – because things develop fast in IT, regular training is necessary if you want your internal team to be able to keep doing their jobs. New viruses, new known issues, and new vastly improved products arrive all the time. With an in-house team, the cost of being prepared is on you. But if it’s your MSP’s job to be on top of the latest IT products and threats, handling the cost of training their experts is on them.
- Diluting your team’s focus – this is often a problem experienced by those high-growth companies. Being forced to assign increasing staff hours to plug holes in your IT system is an easy way to waste resources and distract your team from doing what they really should be doing. Most MSPs offer flexible services that let you get just what you need, changing your choice as you grow.
4) Make your tech costs predictable
One of the biggest tech-related problems is the fluctuating costs of technology and related services. The ability to overcome this is one of the major reasons behind the modern dominance of MSPs over old-fashioned, “fix when broken” IT support.
MSPs offer their services at a flat monthly rate. As your business grows, you might need to up the support you get to a different scale of service.
But that is a clear and known decision for the future. The standard monthly fee doesn’t fluctuate. You always know what your IT is costing you month to month. There are no unexpected costs, making budgeting very simple indeed.
5) Maximise your cyber security
Because your MSP handles staying on top of the latest threats and viruses that crop up, you can rest easy knowing that your business is always as protected as it can possibly be from all kinds of cyber security dangers.
One of the biggest threats to your cyber security is staff awareness. Because of this, many MSPs provide training for your new team members as part of their packages.
Your MSP will also be able to do things like switch you to a fully managed cloud-based system. This maximises your security protections while ensuring your team can collaborate safely and easily, whether they’re based locally or on different sides of the planet.
The proactive approach that MSPs rely on will minimise expensive downtime, whether that’s a side-effect of cyber attacks (this can sometimes be almost as costly as data loss caused by the attack itself) or caused by other technical problems.
6) Rely on 24-hour support
Most MSPs these days can resolve the overwhelming majority of IT problems you experience remotely – usually even before you realise there’s a problem. But that doesn’t mean that most won’t act fast to arrive on-site when the situation calls for it.
For example, Dial A Geek provides site visits without extra charges on most packages when the usual remote fix isn’t enough.
Wondering exactly how a managed service would work for your business?
Join the nearly 1000 businesses in and around Bristol that use Dial A Geek.
Set up a quick, commitment-free chat with Chief Geek Gildas Jones today via his booking calendar. Let’s see how we can make your tech work for you.
ALL ARTICLES