Top 12 Benefits of Using Managed IT Services

Having a robust IT infrastructure is critical for business owners looking to optimize their productivity and processes. But choosing between in-house IT or leveraging the expertise of a Managed Service Provider (MSP) is no easy task. While in-house IT allows you always to have a team on-site, it can be limited to the resources you can divert to IT and limited by the expertise and knowledge provided by an IT service provider, these are just some of the many benefits of managed IT services.

 

Why You Need a Managed Service Provider  

Leveraging an MSP’s expertise, resources and capabilities allows your company to be confident that their IT environment and technology will work to support your business goals. Many companies reach a point of inflection: should we have an in-house IT department, or should we engage a managed IT services provider? 

 This can be difficult to grapple with, as companies want to ensure a high level of personalized service, technical innovation, and efficiency without breaking the bank. 

 

Benefits of Managed IT Services  

Understanding why you need an IT services provider is rooted in the benefits they can offer your business and support your business goals. Cost savings and leveraging experience and expertise in topics such as cloud computing, network infrastructure, and support services are deciding factors when selecting an IT service provider. Here are the top twelve reasons why you need managed IT services.

1. Saves You Time 

Using a managed service provider allows you to focus on your core goals and running your business. A managed IT provider can take 100% control of your IT environment; this means you don’t have to spend your precious time fighting technology fires and directing the IT department to have a strategic focus on business goals. A managed IT firm becomes the expert, ensuring your technology needs are met and that technology continually helps propel your business forward.   

2. Reduce Costs 

Having a full-time technician on staff or an entire internal IT department has significant costs associated with it. Keeping an IT staff member employed includes salary, benefits, training, absence, and coverage, not to mention hiring due to turnover. When using an IT service provider, you can reduce and control operating costs while leveraging the provider’s expertise. A managed service provider provides consistent service without the added costs associated with maintaining key personnel.    

Additionally, with a managed service provider, your business can avoid high capital expenditures and have predictable operating expenses. This predictable monthly budget is negotiated with an IT service provider, and added costs are discussed prior to implementation. Therefore, IT costs are a stable entity that can be easily tracked and understood. Managed service providers like SysGen operate with fixed monthly fees that include all-encompassing costs to manage and optimize your business IT environment. 

3. Streamline Your Productivity

MSPs are dedicated to ensuring business processes and continuity, meaning that productivity and efficiency are at the core of the IT environment. When working with an MSP, there is minimal network downtime, and client data is highly safeguarded to ensure that you can easily regain access to important information in the event of a network outage. Further, MSPs provide on-call support services 24/7 to address issues and ensure that your business and its employees can quickly solve them.   

To streamline productivity, a key element of MSP’s offering is a proactive approach to IT, solving technical difficulties before they occur. Rather than reacting as issues arise, proactive MSPs like SysGen find issues before they cause headaches in your business. 

4. A Reliable Solution You Can Count On 

The help desk model is a magnet for inefficiency, creating backlogs of issues without personal support. One of the benefits of managed IT services, depending on the provider, is having personal technicians, is available to support 24/7 and has intimate knowledge of your company to fully understand the scope and impact of IT on your business.   

5. Secure Your Data  

Data is quickly becoming a critical asset for most businesses, and safeguarding that data is paramount. When using an MSP, cybersecurity becomes integrated into your IT environment. MSPs can maintain and install the latest IT security technology to keep your business safe. 

6. Access Cutting Edge Technology 

Technology innovation is guaranteed when working with an IT organization because of its focus on being a leading technical expert in the marketplace. By technicians surrounding themselves with cutting-edge information regularly, their clients benefit by having the latest and most useful technologies implemented. In addition, their clients are not responsible for paying to train their employees on these advanced systems internally. 

7. Understand Your Entire IT Ecosystem 

It’s important to have an inventory of infrastructure to ensure hardware and software are serving your company optimally. With outdated technology, productivity decreases and security vulnerabilities increase. Documenting your network infrastructure ensures your IT experience is optimized for your business and continues to improve over the years.  

8. Ensure Your IT is Managed by Experts 

With an MSP, your IT environment will be managed by experts. In today’s digitized business environment, IT infrastructure and applications require highly skilled and specialized experts to optimize solutions fully. MSPs already possess the knowledge that it would otherwise be a costly endeavour to train in-house staff.   

These experts are then held to high accountability standards through Service Level Agreements (SLAs). The SLAs ensure accountability where commitment to service excellence is outlined and enforced. Technical experts on-site and behind the scenes guarantee that a certain level of technology experience is delivered, and should this be violated, it is clear that a contractual obligation has been broken, leading to appropriate measures.   

9. Increase ROI and Reduce Risk  

With an IT provider, your company has access to the collective experience of a team of IT professionals with specific and in-depth qualifications, industry training, and up-to-date certifications. Additionally, multiple dedicated resources with superior technical expertise and experience are available to you to call upon solutions using industry best practices. 

Being at the forefront of technology policy, managed service providers also provide early notifications of government regulatory compliance. For example, organizations that require a VMWare expert might only require the specialist for twenty hours per year. These individuals are expensive to hire in-house and may be difficult to locate. With SysGen, you’ll always have access to the required expert whenever needed, and, depending on the situation, it could be included in the monthly service cost you already pay.   

10. Benefit from Customized Solutions for Your Business 

Managed IT providers can analyze your business objectively. What are your business goals? How should technology serve your business? What solutions provide the greatest productivity at the least cost over a fixed term? Utilizing a managed service provider should not be about an ad-hoc, break-fix approach to technology, where the sole goal is to fix a printer or reboot a computer. The relationship should be about using IT strategically to achieve business goals and ensure productivity is guaranteed and amplified. 

11. Leverage Established Relationships with Vendors 

Your business benefits from the relationships MSPs build with software and hardware vendors. Procurement services enable bulk purchasing and leasing options of hardware and software, freeing you from the due diligence and time-consuming exercise of sourcing the best vendors and suppliers. Additionally, these established relationships ensure you’re receiving the best value the marketplace offers because you’re leveraging the buying power the IT service provider has established with the manufacturer. Leveraging established vendor relationships is a major factor of why you need managed IT services, as it is critical in obtaining cutting edge technology.

12. Scale Your Operations 

Being technology experts, IT organizations understand what customers need and develop the IT services required to serve these needs. For example, SysGen developed the SysGen Atmosphere, understanding that small and medium businesses needed a cloud computing solution for their specific business operations. Understanding the desire of businesses to move away from on-site physical servers to a cloud computing environment they feel comfortable with served as the motivation for developing SysGen’s cloud offering. Understanding that businesses also want access to services they might not normally have on a small scale, such as two-factor authentication and dashboard monitoring, are additional IT services managed services.   

 

Are Managed Services Right for Your Business?

Weighing the benefits of managed IT services and choosing whether to move forward with an internal IT department or a managed IT service provider is an important decision to make. It is critical to look at the technology landscape – with cybersecurity attacks on the rise, technology becoming increasingly complex, and companies continually going digital, guaranteeing a solid technology partner is a fundamental aspect for businesses to consider. Ensure your technology needs are considered and that achieving your business goals is at the forefront of your technology relationship.  

At SysGen, we focus relentlessly on the needs of our clients, understanding their IT issues and how they impact business. Our approach is personal and proactive, ensuring that when problems arise, we can build solutions to optimize your business processes.

Contact us to learn more about Managed IT Services and how they can benefit your enterprise.