Managed IT services are an integral tool in many businesses to keep them operating at maximum capacity, regardless of the time of day. If you are on the fence about using a managed IT support service, there are several benefits that might help you decide.

More Cost-Effective

When you consider hiring full-time employees to meet your IT needs or hiring contractors, versus using a managed service, you may quickly realize the latter is a more cost-effective solution. Generally, you will need more than one full-time employee to handle IT—often the job requires multiple employees, each with their own specialty within your system's infrastructure. The costs associated with maintaining employees, especially when you consider their salary, benefits, and costs associated with additional office space, may be unreasonable. Your IT network may not have daily needs, such as preventative maintenance or repairs, so in-house staff can be overkill.

The other option, contractors, can be more cost-effective than in-house staff. They are only paid to perform certain duties and may not have added incentives, such as benefits. Unfortunately, this model causes problems because you need someone to keep an eye on your network, and calling in a contractor after a problem has occurred can result in significant downtime. Managed services can be considered a hybrid solution, combining the benefits of full-time employees and contractors. Your system is being monitored consistently from an outside source, and the cost is often lower than maintaining employees.

Added Services

Hiring someone to manage your IT network is one job, but having the complete package involves other comprehensive tools to make your network better, more efficient, and increase productivity. Managed IT services generally offer the complete package, which includes consulting services. For example, your business may have a combination of in-house employees and remote employees. This means virtual collaboration may be the only way to link the two groups together.

Your managed service will fix problems with your collaboration system if they occur, but part of their job is also to suggest ways to make collaboration more efficient. Updating your current system to one that better fits the unique needs of the business might be a better option. Additionally, developing unique programs could solve many collaboration problems. This could include mobile applications or cloud-based collaboration tools that are not out of the box, but designed by your managed service and updated by them as new ideas to improve the system are formulated.

Additionally, since managed services typically offer private servers, automatic backup, security, and database management, this means less space within the business is dedicated to housing IT equipment or time spent dealing with hardware repairs. The added security of having someone else manage the security of your system can make you feel confident that threats such as viruses or hackers are being proactively managed or immediately fixed.

24/7 Solutions

One of the major benefits of a managed IT service is your system is being monitored 24/7. This can be an added incentive for both smaller businesses and larger corporations, especially businesses that have online stores, the medical industry, and other professions where downtime is not an option. Traditionally, full-time IT professionals don't work rotating shifts to maintain the system day and night, indefinitely. When a problem occurs, especially at odd hours of the night, the problem may only be noticed when someone comes to work the next morning. This can translate into hours of lost revenue for online businesses or times when records or other databases cannot be accessed. Having a managed IT service limits the uncertainty surrounding spontaneous system problems or failures.

Cost-effectiveness, variety of services, and dependability can heavily influence your decision. With numerous benefits to using a managed service, there is little reasons to continue with full-time IT employees or consultants.

Share