1. Focus on Core Objectives
As your business grows, so will your IT needs. Your IT team may be able to handle some of this increased workload but will most likely find themselves overwhelmed and unable to scale according to your business’ needs. This forces you to assign additional responsibilities to employees who are not on the IT team, which can distract employees from core business objectives.
A couple benefits of managed services are that it frees up your employees to focus on the jobs they were hired for as well as enables you to fill in the gaps as needed. A truly qualified managed services partner (MSP) will offer a flexible service model that allows you to determine what level of service you require.
2. Get the Expertise You Need
New technology means new problems. Regardless of whether your systems are in the cloud or on premise, you will need a significant number of resources to support your business solutions. This poses an issue if your IT department is really a one-person shop.
One of the key advantages of the managed services model is that it enables you to hire an entire team of IT professionals at a flat monthly rate. Certain MSPs take on a shared approach, meaning you can add or remove specialists from your managed specialists include technical, functional, architectural, and training consultants who can help you keep your systems up and running.
3. Keep Costs Low
From a cost perspective, one of the clear benefits of managed services is that it lowers labor costs and eliminates the cost of hiring and training new IT staff. Most MSPs offer a hybrid model of onshore and offshore resources, which lowers the average effective rate and widens your resource base.
Best of all, since you sign a service-level agreement that is tailored to your organization’s unique needs, you will never have to worry about unexpected service costs. Look for an MSP that has a solid strategic relationship with your solutions or cloud provider for additional savings.
4. Scale up or Down as Needed
As your technology needs evolve over time, you will need to scale your system either up or down to accommodate them. Fortunately, the systems we use are highly scalable by design. MSPs can respond to changes in demand in real time, so you never have to worry about system downtime.
Be sure to look for an MSP that not only has hundreds of consultants available, but also offers advanced services such as proactive monitoring, upgraded services release management, reporting, and more to get the greatest value and scalability out of your partnership.
5. Receive Support Whenever You Need It
With an MSP, you never need to worry about availability because most offer 24/7 flexibility, on-call options, and weekend support. When searching for the perfect MSP, look for a global company that can support multiple time zones and offers round-the-clock support, so you can rest assured that help is available whenever you need it.
6. Avoid Expensive Downtime
Another one of the benefits of managed services is that rather than sit and wait for something to go wrong, MSPs take a proactive approach to maintenance. MSPs use remote monitoring and management to identify, diagnose, and troubleshoot potential problems before they ever have a chance to become an issue. Network downtime can cost businesses as much as $5,600 per minute, which is well over $300k per hour. It is easy to see how outsourcing to an MSP pays for itself.
7. Gain a Reliable Point of Contact
When you partner with an MSP, you will get a dedicated team that knows your company and your business solutions inside and out, led by a single customer success manager (CSM). Your CSM will act as a reliable, single point of contact who can serve as a middleman between you and your vendors and triage any issue on your behalf. Should your CSM be unavailable for any reason, there is an established escalation path and a secondary contact ready to step in.
8. Get Support for Security & Compliance
Software platforms that we use analyze an exponential amount of data daily to benefit your business — data that must be maintained in secure way that is compliant with relevant industry regulations. Your MSP can partner with your legal team to find out which regulations it should be aware of so that it can take precautions to ensure that your systems meet them.
Contact the team at LinkPoint today to learn more about how your business can benefit from an MSP. Email us at info@linkpoint.ca or call us directly at 1-888-557-0259.