Mediocrity is the last thing you want for your IT resources, you also wouldn’t want half-baked support and staggering bills. When all of that comes together, business owners are faced with a difficult choice: continuing with in-house IT staff or investing in managed IT services. Both have their unique advantages and disadvantages for addressing today’s modern business environment, so it would be best to explore the avenue of managed IT services.
As a business owner, it’s understandable that you want to do everything yourself. Your business is your pride and joy, a consummation of all the time, money and effort you’ve invested. Because businesses represent the sacrifices and copious amounts of hard work their owners expended to make something of themselves, these owners sometimes try hard to keep whatever operations they can in-house, especially IT.
To accommodate your growing business, you’ll need reliable full-time support to carry out system management as well as troubleshooting. This doesn’t always mean a dedicated in-house IT team; these days, you can easily monitor and adjust your systems 24/7 from a remote location to reduce the amount of overtime you’d otherwise have to pay an-in-house IT team. Here are some more reasons why outsourcing can help eliminate mediocrity from your IT resources:
In-house expenditures
To pique the interest of an average business, a typical systems engineer would need to have around three-to-five years of working experience. Companies would have to pay approximately $72,000 per year, and this is just the base salary. On top of that, there are other overhead costs associated with each staff member on the payroll; this includes taxes, insurance and benefits and per-head IT costs -- all amounting to a 20-25 percent markup on the base salary, bringing the total sum to approximately $85,000-95,000 annually.
In comparison, managed services providers provide better IT support for a much more affordable rate. Depending on the size of your small- or medium-sized business, managed services providers have various packages that can meet all your requirements without breaking the bank. Let’s say that it costs $4,500 per month. Unlike in-house IT staff, there aren’t any additional subscription fees, so this would bring the annual total to $54,000. Even if there were additional fixed costs associated with MSPs, the total still wouldn’t exceed what you’d pay for in-house IT teams.
An assortment of expertise
Unlike an in-house IT team, managed services providers are equipped with numerous skills and a wealth of experience that in-house IT teams wouldn’t be able to deliver. With a managed IT service team, you can be sure that there are experts dedicated to specific areas such as desktop virtualization or data security. So you wouldn’t need to hire more and more staff you otherwise would have had to add to the payroll. Moreover, these individuals boast years of putting what they’ve learned to the test across a broad range of industries. So when you think that your current IT problem is unique, chances are that MSPs have already seen and dealt with it before -- meaning that the issue will be taken care of quickly and efficiently.
Quantitative approach
To ensure that your current IT resources are giving you enough bang for your buck, you need various analytics tools that provide insight into how well your tech is doing and what improvements could be made. Unfortunately, this is something many in-house IT teams don’t provide, but when working with an MSP you can expect that they are equipped with monitoring applications and management tools to monitor your progress 24x7. On top of that, managed service providers can also offer helpdesk services that serve as a single point of contact when devices malfunction.
Vendor relationships
If your in-house IT staff aren’t on a first-name basis with your nearest Microsoft or Cisco representative, or if they aren’t aware of when the latest security patch will be released, it might be time to consider a managed services provider. Not only do they work closely with vendors to establish relationships that offer better prices and deals on contracts, but they also ensure that your company is kept up-to-date with training sessions that cover the latest security risks and scams.
If you’re currently looking for a managed services provider but are unsure about leaving your in-house IT team behind, don’t worry! Let us show you what your business is truly capable of and that it’s possible to do more with less. Feel free to get in touch with us via telephone or email; we’re more than happy to answer all your questions.
