The Benefits of working with an IT Managed Service Provider, MSP
Running any business takes considerable time and energy, as does taking responsibility for the Business Support requirements such as IT. And that's where IT MSPs can provide valuable assistance.
IT Managed Service Providers or IT MSPs exist to take on some of the burden of IT Support, Management and Development. IT MSPs can take various forms, but in essence they provide an outsourced service for either your entire IT Function or some part of it such as Project Consultancy, Escalation Support, additional niche skills, Virtual IT Director and Strategy Consultancy.
It's a common misconception that outsourcing IT is just about saving money. A really great IT MSP will take the time to understand you and your business, whether they are providing you with fully outsourced IT Support and Management, a new Communications Solution, one-off Project Consultancy or anything in-between. Outsourcing your IT isn't always about transferring all roles; often IT MSPs will work with your existing in-house IT Team. For example, at io we are also specialists at working in parallel with your internal IT Team, enhancing and complementing existing capabilities, adding Virtual IT Director and Manager roles and providing holiday cover and an escalation route for Support Staff and Infrastructure Teams and even providing mentoring.
There are many other benefits to working with an IT MSP.
Concentrate on Running your Business
With a Professional MSP complementing your existing IT Team or providing a fully outsourced service, you can concentrate on running your business. Technology is constantly evolving and the responsibilities of the IT Team are always expanding. Knowing you have an experienced team of engineers, solution architects and IT Managers can help you remain focused on what you do best.
Scalability and Agility - Future Proofing
MSPs are suited to adapting to customers' requirements and they should by their very nature be highly scalable and adaptive to change. As a customer business grows or changes, an MSP should be highly responsive and able to provide resources in a different or increased manner. MSPs should anticipate customers' future requirements and technical challenges and be prepared to proactively recommend appropriate personnel and technical improvements. As an MSP will be doing this over and over again for multiple customers they can demonstrate considerable agility when dealing with business growth or challenges.
Improve Security
Cyber-attacks are continually on the rise and developing in complexity; being on top of company-wide Cyber Security is a considerable challenge for today's IT Department. Professional MSPs have the resources to ensure that your business receives the latest guidance, training and systems as well as responding appropriately to Cyber Incidents.
Breadth of Experience
There's no doubt your Internal IT Team are skilled, experienced personnel; when paired with the breadth of experience within an IT MSP your Internal Team will be able to focus on their core responsibilities. An IT MSP can simply add additional Support Engineers to work within your team, but the breadth of experience within an IT MSP makes them ideal for assisting with specialist and niche technologies or taking on those time consuming tasks that are weighing down your internal team.
Improved Business Continuity
Keeping your workforce productive is paramount to the success of your business and for most this means maintaining high levels of IT Systems uptime. Any downtime costs your business and can damage your reputation. A great IT MSP will be dedicated to providing you with fast and high quality responses to all queries and incidents, as well as proactively maintaining all computers, servers, networking, cloud systems and more. A great advantage of working with an MSP is that they will likely provide you with All Year Cover including covering holidays for any internal IT staff you may have.
Cost Savings
Ok, we said it wasn't just about saving money, but that is a pretty good reason... Partnering with an IT MSP is extremely cost effective. MSPs provide IT and nothing but IT, so they are commercially geared to being as cost efficient as possible; their entire Operations Team is honed to provide IT Services to partnering businesses and nothing else. When working with an MSP you'll have access to a whole team of IT Engineers rather than having to invest in recruiting and supporting a whole internal IT Team. Many MSPs will operate on some form of subscription based payment model which allows a business to predict their IT budget more accurately and reduce operational costs.
Almost all businesses will require IT of some form but it can be a difficult and time consuming service to manage and this is where IT MSPs can show their value to your business.