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The Top 7 Benefits of Outsourcing Your IT Department
First and foremost, the number one reason small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) choose to outsource their information technology needs is so that they experience fewer headaches. Of course, this is an oversimplified and distilled encapsulation of a complex issue. And to make a qualified business decision regarding whether or not to outsource your organization’s IT, you need to back it up with supporting evidence.
An IT department is made up of a complex environment of hardware, software, and computer networks that allow you to perform important business functions and work flows such as accounting and financial processes (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), email, and document creation.
Your company’s success depends on it being able to use these functions reliably and efficiently. For example, it is imperative for organizations to send and receive emails to communicate with clients, employees, partners and vendors – to fulfill product and service orders. How long can your business operate without such an important function? Additionally, you must be able to access customer information and financial data to run your business. And to protect these processes, there are many back-end functions that need to be performed including security, anti-virus protection, data backup & recovery, and server monitoring.
With this large and vital undertaking, is it feasible for an SMB to totally take on the tasks and responsibilities necessary to run its own IT department? Not without a sizeable commitment and investment in IT talent, infrastructure, money and time. Training IT staff, maintaining IT devices and keeping technology up-to-date are huge burdens for most SMBs
Here is a list of the top seven benefits of outsourcing your IT department to an experienced and credentialed Managed Services Provider (MSP):
1. Control and Reduce Costs
When you outsource your organization’s IT functions to an MSP, you are able to control costs by paying a set monthly fee, so you know what your expenditures are and they do not fluctuate month to month. You are also able to take advantage of their economies of scale, lower cost structures, and learned efficiencies and expertise. When you have your own IT department to fund and run, it can be extremely expensive. Qualified IT professionals must maintain their level of expertise as well as be adequately compensated.
Additionally, MSPs offer cloud-hosted services where you can rent hardware such as servers, and even have them located offsite and monitored on a continual basis, which substantially lowers your total IT investment. All hardware has an “end-of-life” expiration for when its performance deteriorates, then fails and needs to be replaced. Cloud-hosted services allow you to control and predict these costs.
2. Focus on Your Business
Your organization may be a law, engineering, accounting, or construction firm, and these are your core competencies, not information technology. Every company has limits to its resources, and an MSP will let you redirect them from non-core activities toward activities that provide a greater return. By allowing a qualified MSP to take care of your IT, this frees up your resources to concentrate on the areas that make you successful and grow.
3. Access to the Most Current Technology
Qualified MSPs bring world-class knowledge and experience to your organization on a continual basis. With an MSP, you will receive access to new technologies and know-how that you may not have considered previously, as well as techniques and tools that you currently do not possess. These tools include tried-and-true procedures and processes; documentation; and more structured methodologies.
Additionally, a qualified MSP company tests the engineers they hire, and maintains their training and examinations on a continual basis to keep them up-to-date with the latest technologies.
Also, MSPs bring a wide variety of IT professionals with different skills sets to take care of a number of situations. If you have your own IT staff, their skill set would be limited to their expertise.
4. 24/7/365 Monitoring of Your IT Environment
Even if you do have knowledgeable and qualified IT professionals on staff, with a limited number of staff, it would not be reasonable to have them monitor your IT environment every hour of the day, and every day of the year. Qualified MSPs have the tools and staff to do this, and can foresee serious issues with your IT environment and can fix them before downtime occurs. And they would be able to advise you on necessary future upgrades to avoid any future downtime. Are your servers more than three years old? Are you using an operating system that is no longer supported?
MSPs can also take care of day-to-day tasks such as software updates and patches, anti-virus updates, data backups, and inventory auditing and control.
5. Minimize Risk
MSPs will keep your day-to-day IT environment up-to-date easily and effortlessly by automating the process using specialized tools. MSPs are responsible for verifying that backups are working, pushing out patches, and auditing inventory to minimize the risk of catastrophic occurrences.
They also take on the responsibility of being alerted of unpredictable circumstances such as backup and hardware failures, database corruptions, software crashes, and virus and spyware intrusions, acting quickly to prevent downtime. A limited in-house IT staff may not be able to respond and take care of the problem as quickly, leading to extended downtime, putting productivity at risk.
And with the MSP’s expertise, you reduce the risk of making a wrong decision because of any lack of technical experience.
6. Strategic Consulting and Future IT Roadmap Planning
With years of experience working with different client companies and industries, as well as keeping current with the latest technology, qualified MSPs will advise companies on their future IT requirements. This is done by evaluating the company’s growth and accompanying IT needs, whether the company plans to move or expand, or enter into new markets.
Technology is constantly changing, and it is difficult to ascertain what a company will need in the future and how those needs will translate into dollars. By partnering with an MSP, uncertainties become more predictable.
7. Increased Productivity
Because of all of the above benefits, your organization will be able to lower its costs and focus on its core competencies. A qualified MSP can predict, prevent and quickly respond to serious issues that lead to catastrophic failures and extended downtime. Moreover, you will be using the most current technology that enhances your success and makes you more competitive. With first-class technology, you can streamline processes and make them more efficient and productive, and your company will also be able to take advantage of opportunities more quickly.
If you are considering partnering with an MSP to take care of your IT needs, Contact the experts at NexusTek. We provide managed IT services to hundreds of companies in the Greater Denver Metro region and beyond.