Managed IT services have proven to be one of the most essential kinds of IT services around. When you choose to outsource your IT to a group of qualified professionals, managed IT services is the term to search. While this option may not be the perfect one for everyone, it does offer a lot of benefits in a single convenient bundle. These benefits will all eventually boil down to a financial benefit in one way or another. Anything that helps your business to be more efficient will probably increase its profits in the end.
1. Increased Employee Efficiency
A lot of your employees will have to rely on the network for the performance of their daily tasks. Of course, you want to hire people that will work efficiently and with a sense of urgency. However, they can only work as fast as the network allows. Speeding up your network will allow your employees to have a higher potential for productivity, although the amount of the actual increase will vary.
2. Greatly Reduced Scaling Costs
When any business expands the size of its operations, there will always be up-scaling costs. There is no way to eliminate them, but you can reduce them by doing things more efficiently. If you try to manage everything with an in-house team, you will have to buy a lot more hardware and software. Since you will be buying it directly from the vendors, you will be paying a fairly high price.
The use of managed (meaning outsourced) IT services will allow you to simplify all of that. Your service provider handles everything on the network end, which means you don’t have to build or maintain servers. When you upscale a managed IT services plan, you simply tell them what you want and negotiate a new monthly rate.
3. Fewer Customers Turning Away
When someone is thinking about making an online purchase, they are likely to have a short attention span. You want to get their attention quickly and let them know what is being offered. If they have to wait several minutes for a page to load, that interest is going to wane. Studies have repeatedly shown that most buying decisions are made on impulse. When you think about it that way, you can understand how a slow network can directly translate to a decrease in sales.
4. Streamlining Of In-House IT Operations
When you choose to outsource your IT services, you don’t necessarily need to outsource all of them. For instance, if you already have a very capable IT team, you might not want to get rid of them. However, you don’t always need to do that. Instead, you can outsource the time-consuming and menial tasks so that your team has time to use their expertise to the fullest. This means that they can work on improving things and solving major problems, which does translate to a more labor-efficient setup.
5. Better Security
If you know anything about data security, you know that it is best to use a “layered” approach. To understand this idea, think about the idea of a fortress with multiple walls, one inside of the other. If an attacker gets through one wall, another remains to block their path. In terms of IT security, this translates to the use of multiple barriers and multiple layers of authentication and lots of other creative measures.
When you make use of a managed IT service provider, you can basically use them as an extra layer. By utilizing security-focused services (like MSSP services), you can go even further and lock everything down. If nothing else, the monitoring services offered by most managed IT service providers will provide a much better chance of detecting a breach before it happens.
6. Better Compliance
Managed IT services can also result in better compliance with laws and regulations. There is always the chance that your employees could miss something, and that is where an extra layer of verification comes in handy. Considering the complexity of the many laws and regulations that you probably have to follow, having another group of eyes on compliance can save a lot of money on fines.
7. Reduced Network Downtime
We have already talked about the ways in which a slow network can slow your business. Thus, you can imagine what happens when the network goes down. Business comes to a standstill. Even if the outage is a short one, there is no telling how much business you might lose. Some companies have lost millions or even billions of dollars from relatively short outages.
This is why all managed IT service providers will offer an SLA (service-level agreement) which limits the amount of permissible downtime per month. This number should be higher than 90%, as anything greater than 10% downtime would be ridiculous. Even 10% would be completely unacceptable for some companies. If the terms of the SLA are not met, the provider becomes responsible for financial damages.
8. More Consistent Monthly Costs
Of course, managed IT services are not free. However, in-house IT services aren’t free, either. While both of these plans cost money, the costs are much more consistent with a managed provider. You negotiate a consistent monthly rate when you begin service, and that is all you have to pay. On the other hand, in-house IT costs will include everything from labor costs to server maintenance, and these costs are assessed on an as-needed basis. In the end, a managed IT provider gives you a much more predictable expense.
Conclusion
Although you might not want to get rid of your existing IT team, managed IT services offer a lot of benefits. Also, you don’t always have to make that hard choice. In-house and outsourced teams can work together and cooperate when needed, as many companies choose to do. If you would like to know more, or if you are interested in managed IT services, you can call PCH Technologies at (856) 754-7500.