The small business IT state of play
The state of play of IT infrastructure management for small to medium size businesses (SMBs) often reflects a precarious situation. Companies find themselves with insufficient resources to support their IT needs. If the SMB possesses the luxury of having one or more IT professionals on the payroll, it’s likely that these individuals are swamped with daily routine and troubleshooting activities. These employees are not focused on projects aimed at increasing productivity and profitability. In short, they’re not adding value to your business as they should be. Not great for your bank balance nor motivating for your staff.
A wasted IT budget
Gartner Inc., a Connecticut based information technology research and advisory firm, confirms that nearly 70% of IT budgets are allocated to tasks that merely keep things running. That leaves 30% for other endeavours such as development projects. What this means is that an SMB’s technology investment doesn’t go far with respect to improving operations or enhancing network and data security.
The role of managed services
The last decade has seen the concept of managed services become increasingly more popular in the realm of IT infrastructure management. Businesses, small and large, are outsourcing to managed service providers (MSPs) to effectively manage, monitor and support their IT processes, software and hardware.
MSPs are mistakenly perceived as a threat to any in-house IT staff, most particularly by your tech guys themselves. However, the MSP is not necessarily a replacement for your on-site support. Using a hybrid of outsourced managed services and internal IT support means that your SMB has the best in IT infrastructure management and maintenance, hybrid public and private cloud services and a 24×7 helpdesk. With their knowledge and experience, your local MSP provides managed IT solutions so your company achieves a greater return on investment (ROI) on IT expenditure while ensuring that your in-house IT resources are put to their best possible use.
Managed services means smiling staff
Most of the mundane IT tasks performed daily by your in-house team can easily be automated and dome remotely. This might imply that your IT staff are superfluous; nothing is further from the truth. The MSP will offer services such as proactive management and monitoring, an end-user helpdesk for employees and clients, a 24/7 Network Operations Centre (NOC), disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity (BC) solutions, and regularly scheduled system audits and updates.
So one positive outcome of outsourcing to an MSP is that you’ll have happy, contented and motivated IT staff who can expand their roles within your company. The days of routine maintenance will be long gone, and your IT guys can focus their energy on projects such as website optimisation, database consolidation and social media management for marketing.
NOC and helpdesk free up time
Your MSP will provide a ticketing and monitoring system and support from a 24×7 NOC. This means that your IT staff will be able to identify and address any issues in your IT infrastructure before they become problematic and result in downtime and business disruption. Moreover, all those minor troubleshooting tasks such as workstation patching and updates can be handled by the managed services helpdesk.
Focus and prioritisation for in-house IT
By collaborating with your local MSP, your in-house IT team will acquire essential focus and direction meaning they can prioritise IT tasks to achieve enhanced levels of productivity. When you form a partnership with an MSP, they will undoubtedly offer you a complimentary network assessment to evaluate the overall health and stability of your IT infrastructure. The MSP will use the assessment to recommend IT products and services that match the specific needs of your SMB.
The MSP evaluation will aid your IT engineers with future planning whereby a queue of projects can be created and prioritised in order of what is most critical. Put simply, all regular IT system maintenance tasks will be the responsibility of the MSP and your IT team can focus on projects aimed at reducing expenditure and increasing revenue.
MSPs reduce human error
Research confirms that the majority of costly security breaches stem from human error. IT employees are too often overstretched and forget to apply essential security measures such as tested patches or updating antivirus software on systems. Your MSP partner will eliminate a large proportion of the work overload that results in IT security vulnerabilities. If necessary, data and systems can be backed up in the cloud and an immediate restore can be implemented when the need arises. There is no blame-shifting involved and your IT team will not be solely responsible for the security and 24/7 availability of stored company data.
Software, application and hardware failures can all result in expensive downtime and business disruptions. SMBs, unlike their corporate giant counterparts, cannot afford prolonged downtime and need to minimise system outage. However, if downtime-inducing threats are detected at an early stage, they are completely preventable.
MSPs mean 24×7 IT
Your IT infrastructure operates 24×7. It’s unlikely that you currently have the human resources to operate around the clock. However, your MSP will provide continuous system monitoring via a comprehensive user interface that can even be viewed on mobile devices. Your IT engineers will be immediately be notified of any potential issues via messaging or email before they become a problem. Using MSP services such as Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools and the 24/7 NOC, your tech team will find their workload manageable and well-defined.
Your IT staff embrace managed services
As the owner or executive of an SMB, you realise the value of skilled, talented and loyal employees, including your IT personnel. Given the time and availability, the latter could benefit your company in unprecedented ways. For them to achieve the best for your company, they need to be free of monotonous daily tasks and extinguishing tech fires; all activities well below their skill level.
Make the most of your MSP
A competent MSP can be seen as an extension of your business. Since the MSP will closely collaborate with your SMB management, you should also be aware that your internal IT staff may consider the MSP presence as an intrusive threat, an entity putting their job security in jeopardy. With this in mind, you need to encourage your engineers to embrace the cloud services offered by the MSP. Your in-house IT complement should leverage the 24×7 NOC, helpdesk and RMM tools of the MSP to make work manageable and stress-free.
When your IT team is free from laborious, manual activities, they can use their capable minds to tend to projects that matter: developing applications and concepts, and consolidating formative strategies for the benefit of the company bottom line. When you enlist your local managed service provider, you are exploiting innovative and quality practices and tools on the market. When you access the newest technology via the MSP, you are providing your IT engineers with the opportunity to do what they do best.
