Managed Service Providers: Benefits for SMBs
Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) are often bombarded daily by calls from cunning sales ‘experts’ offering trending new technologies. These technologies promise to save money and transform business operations. The ‘experts’ warn that if you don’t take heed, you’ll lag behind your competitors. The predicted final outcome: you’ll be up to your ears in debt and possibly face business closure. So what do you do?
You’ve heard and read about the benefits of using managed service providers (MSPs). MSPs mean accessing clearly defined IT services and support, usually at a fixed rate. You can tailor make your IT service package; you know what you’re getting and know the costs involved. You won’t open your mailbox to find an invoice for services for which you’ll need to borrow from the Bank of England. So should you engage in solicitation calls from MSPs? We believe so. Given that we are in the managed services industry, our opinion may be a little biased.
How MSPs Work
Using remote monitoring and management (RMM) tools, MSPs oversee the overall functioning and health of your IT infrastructure. This mindful monitoring ensures that your business operates effectively and efficiently.
Your MSP should have a round the clock Network Operations Centre (NOC) that is the base camp for monitoring your specific IT services. The NOC should be designed to proactively respond to any IT related issues such as server problems, software and hardware shortcomings or device malfunctioning.
The NOC also performs scheduled systems maintenance that includes
- Automatic cleaning of temporary files
- Implementing tested security patches
- Installing and updating virus and Malware protection
- System backup and disaster recovery
Moreover, your MSP needs to provide access to a Help Desk for both your clients and your employees. By speaking and working directly with the MSP, it becomes integral to your staff assets.
In a snapshot, SMBs benefit from MSPs through proactive maintenance that results in a stable and secure IT environment. Consequently, SMBs have control over IT expenditure and, more importantly, can better serve the end-users who are reliant on their technology.
Alternatives to Manage Services
Research has proven that many companies have little perspective on the impact of IT management costs. Take a quick look at two alternatives to using managed service provision that are typically adopted by companies.
In-House IT Management
Small companies with 20 to 60 employees often have the notion that a single individual can manage their technology and IT systems. This employee requires a broad skillset and needs competency with desktop, server and network support. Furthermore, the individual will interact with Help Desk end-users and company management. It should come as no surprise that salary demands are commensurate with the expertise and workload required by the job. A single IT support individual can feel the pressure of being overworked and hence there is potential for them to make errors or oversights. These mishaps are at the company expense. Also, an in-house person will take annual leave. What then? And what about illness?
Fix It When It Breaks
Small companies tend to apply the break/fix mentality to IT management. They believe they are too small for a stream-lined, sophisticated 24/7 approach. Also, due to the scale of operation, they feel pressured to utilise resources on the products or services they provide. Spending money on background operations such as IT management is thought of as wasteful – until something goes wrong.
So when it breaks, they use on-call IT engineers to fix it. By this time, the damage has been done and there can be significant disruption to business. The delay in the on-call engineer’s response together with a lack of familiarity with your system and operations prolongs downtime. The result: using on-call as a remedy proves expensive and time consuming. Unlike MSPs, on-call is reactive, not proactive.
Parting Word
Given the importance of being competitive and cost-effective, many SMBs opt for managed services as a seamless way to support their IT infrastructure. Not only are MSPs available 24/7 and have a range of skilled staff, but they won’t break the bank.
