For a long time, it was only the very large businesses who were using managed IT service providers. Everyone assumed they cost a lot of money, and it wasn’t easy to see the value. But now, we know that we use our IT network almost every single day. In fact, there aren’t very many businesses that could run without their network, even for a few hours. So managed IT services providers are slowly becoming more and more popular. But why? What exactly do MSPs do, and why is everyone jumping on the bandwagon? Well, we’re going to tell you, starting with a definition of managed IT services:
A managed IT task can be defined as any IT task that is handled by a third-party contractor.
So what do managed service providers do?
Basically anything IT related that your company needs taken care of. Whether you need regular backups, want to make sure you’re running all the recent updates, or you just need to make sure your network stays up, a managed IT service provider can handle that for you.
What makes them better than my IT guy?
Well, we’ve got nothing against your IT guy, or any IT guy. Really we try to stick together. But all kidding aside, managed IT services provide you with the very best in IT tech, efficiently and economically. They can do this for 4 reasons:
Reason #1 – They’re all experts
When you hire someone to handle your managed IT, you’re hiring an entire team of experts. Everyone that works for that company lives, eats, and breathes IT. It’s their job, it’s what they went to school for, and it’s usually what they genuinely like to do.
With in-house IT setups, typically a few employees from various other departments are tasked with also keeping the network up and running. While this works great most of the time, these employees don’t have the experience of an IT tech, and they also have way more responsibilities. They’re juggling their day-to-day tasks, in addition to any IT crises that may come up, which means that their sole focus isn’t IT. That’s why hiring a managed IT service provider is often an effective choice. You get the very best in network servicers, at an affordable price.
Reason #2 – They’re proactive
Since a managed service provider focuses just on providing IT services to all of their clients, they know what updates are out there, and they know how your network is doing at all times. They can install updates as soon as they come out, and they can tweak and change your network before issues come up, rather than fixing them after the network goes down.
Now, don’t get us wrong, no managed IT service provider can prevent every network problem out there. From time to time, outages do happen. But the bonus is that they’re extremely less common when you have a team working on your behalf every day. They can detect issues before they occur, and they have the time to fix those small problems before they get bigger. When you have one in-house IT person, it’s unlikely that they have the time to take that level of care.
Reason #3 – They’re always on call
Most reputable managed service providers have someone on call 24/7 in case of a network emergency. Like we mentioned earlier, no one can guarantee 0% downtime. Unfortunately, it’s likely that once in a great while, your network might go down. When that happens, you need it back up as soon as possible, because downtime is expensive.
If you’ve got one in-house IT service provider, and they’re gone on vacation, or even if they’ve just left for the day, you could be down for way longer than you want or can afford. This issue is avoided when you hire a managed IT service provider. You simply call your provider and notify them of the issue, and if they weren’t already working on the problem, they’ll be able to fix it for you as soon as possible.
Reason #4 – They’re cost-effective
The budget for every business is tight. You don’t want to spend extra money on something like IT unless you have to. That’s where a managed IT service provider comes in. First of all, many of them offer flat-rate services, which means you only pay for what you use, and second, hiring a third party to handle your IT is usually way cheaper than paying a full-time employee to do it for you. Why?
Managed IT service providers prevent disasters from happening, they regularly update your network, they increase security and block out data breaches, and generally address your greatest pain points. Additionally, they know what they’re doing, which means they’ll be able to advise you on how to scale your network appropriately to ensure that it’s functioning as effectively as possible. By making your operations more productive, and preventing costly downtime, a managed IT service provider can save you a lot of money in the long run. And the bonus is that you’ll know how much to allocate for your IT budget ahead of time. Most managed IT service providers offer transparent billing, and they bill on a month-to-month basis. So you’ll know what your standard monthly fee is, and you’ll have the power to dictate if they add on any extra services to that monthly fee.
When you hire a managed IT service provider to take care of your business’s network, you’ll get a team of experts who can optimize your workplace efficiency and limit downtime. And the best part is that you’ll have one less thing to worry about.
If you have more questions about managed IT service providers, or if you’re interested to see how managed IT services could work for your business, get in touch! At RedFive IT, we’ve got an entire staff of IT experts, and we’re here to help. Give our office a call at 1-877-890-7335, or contact us online today!
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