As a small business owner, you wear many hats and have a wide range of skills. Unless you’re an IT specialist, however, you probably have someone else take care of your IT needs. For many, that means keeping an IT person on staff, paying for hourly help, and unpredictable investment costs, all less than perfect solutions.

Whether you have thought about managed IT services or not, haven’t pulled the trigger yet, or have no clue where to begin, here are five things that you should consider.

“. . . establishing a strong, strategic partnership with your MSP is essential.” – CIO

1. Cost

Small and medium sized business owners worry about the cost of everything. You have to in order to keep your business running. Managed IT services may sound expensive but, in reality, they can offer you significant savings.

Businesses that switched from paying an hourly rate for IT to managed services saw their costs drop by up to 50% or more. 13% saw that level of savings, while 46% saw savings by 25% or more. A quick analysis of your expenditures and a consultation with a quality managed IT services provider (MSP) will reveal how much you can potentially save.

Additionally, the use of an MSP can bring predictability to costs. This is done through a simplified pricing model many quality MSP’s offer that is based on a flat rate monthly for each user, each server, each app, or other service.

2. Security

Choosing managed IT services leads to better cybersecurity for your data. As you are painfully aware, hackers are growing more skilled at illegally accessing data. As of June 2019, the average breach is roughly 25,575 records at a cost of $150 per record. This data entails sensitive data, competitive data and when accessed by outsiders puts companies and their clients at risk.

By making the shift to a managed IT service provider, your company data will gain the protection of more sophisticated cybersecurity measures, making it less likely your data will be stolen or exposed.

“71% of SMBs are not prepared for cybersecurity risks.” – TechRepublic

3. Fast Response

When your computers go down, your productivity can slow to a crawl or stop entirely. You can end up paying your employees for a day when they can’t get anything accomplished.

The cost of downtime can be monumental when you combine the lack of production and the harm to your reputation. Even a one-person shop can sustain serious financial losses.

Managed IT services providers can immediately begin working on your IT problems. Because your MSP knows your environment and the systems they have to offer, they can quickly diagnose and address problems. An MSP can also identify other potential issues that might cause problems in the future. Additionally a quality MSP, offers a Service Level Agreement (SLA) for response times.

4. Recovery

If your small business manages its own IT, you know that adequately backing up your system can be challenging. If your system crashes and burns, recovering your data can be costly. In fact, every year, 140,000 hard drives crash in the United States alone. Paying for a recovery attempt can cost approximately $7,500 for a service that may not be successful.

Any kind of data disasters can seriously harm your business. In fact, in the months immediately after a data disaster, 60% of companies go out of business.

Managed IT service providers make sure your data is backed up and easily recoverable. A disaster on-site at your business doesn’t have to cause long-term damage.

“With an MSP . . . you get to bring in the big guns and benefit from the resources and experience of a company focused solely on IT.” – Forbes

5. Why a Cloud Based MSP

The world is changing. Just 5 years ago, a private or public cloud (Azure, AWS, Google) would have not been a viable option. In contrast, today cloud services such as Office 365, Google Apps, IP Telephony, Dynamics 365, Netsuite, Azure Active Directory, have made managed services more reliable, more affordable and more integrated.

Modern MSP’s must have a majority of their services delivered via cloud in order to meet your ever changing needs.

Are Managed IT Services Right For You?

Managed IT services make sense for small and medium sized business owners on a number of fronts. You can improve your bottom line by utilizing affordable, reliable outsourced IT help.

And really, that’s what it’s all about—equipping you to run your business as effectively as possible. It is worth your time to talk to a few managed IT services providers and see what options are available.

2020 Silas Tate. All Rights Reserved