There are not a lot of industries in the 21st century which can run an efficient organization without proper IT support. Now, the ways in which different companies handle this greatly differ. Some decide to hire an IT expert or start their own IT department. This solution offers more control but has several prominent downsides. These downsides are something that managed IT services can overcome quite effortlessly. With that in mind and without further ado, here are the top six reasons why IT managed services are a must for all businesses, regardless of their size and respective industry.
1. You can’t buy experience (on a budget)
The first thing you need to understand is that by outsourcing, you immediately get experienced IT technicians to tend to your company’s needs. By hiring IT experts, you would have to train, onboard, and wait for your department to get enough experience. Bringing in experienced IT specialists would be incredibly expensive, especially if you planned to keep them on a retainer. Can you get an in-house department that’s as competent as an agency that you would normally outsource to? Of course, but it’s going to be insanely expensive. Not to mention that the required initial investment would be much steeper.
2. Cost-effective around-the-clock support
Having around-the-clock support is incredibly important in a number of industries. However, achieving this can be quite inconvenient. Fortunately, the majority of IT agencies have a global remote workforce. This means that they can easily organize 24/7 support, by simply assigning various tasks to people from different time zones. By doing this, they can avoid night shifts entirely and provide far better consistency in this 24/7 coverage. Also, keep in mind that organizing this additional department ceases to be your responsibility.
3. Focusing on what really matters
The next thing you need to understand is that by hiring IT managed services provided by a specialized agency, you get one less thing to manage on your own. This means fewer administrative tasks. It also means freedom to focus on things that you understand best. You see, one of the biggest misconceptions about professionalism and specialists is that they provide a better end result. While this is often the case, there are a lot of instances in which they provide the same result in fewer work hours. This time-saving property of outsourcing is something that you should take seriously and something that you should never, ever downplay.
4. Keeping up to date
Perhaps the biggest challenge in the IT sector comes from the fact that improvement is rapid and technology evolves all the time. Software maintenance and updates alone can be a difficulty and they’re just one tiny part of all the responsibilities in your IT sector. Entrusting this to someone else frees your workforce but it also provides you with greater reliability. Remember that keeping your staff up to date with the latest industry trends doesn’t come cheap either. Therefore, you would constantly have to invest in their education and find a way to provide them with opportunities to sharpen their skills. By outsourcing, you skip all of it.
5. Avoiding downtime (and workforce difficulties)
Downtime can be caused by a number of factors, if you outsource, sorting out these problems will not be your responsibility. In order to avoid downtime, you would have to have backups and contingency plans. In the world of IT, these take a lot of technical prowess and maintenance, as well. It really is an endless loop. Then, what about the staffing problems? What if someone (someone invaluable) decides to leave all of a sudden? What about sick leave or temporary inability to work? The answer to this dilemma is quite simple – you don’t have to manage the staff that you don’t employ directly. You just pay the monthly fee and you’re done with it.
6. Scalability
The most important of all is the scalability that you receive from hiring managed services. The majority of agencies offer a number of plans. Each plan has its own set of offered services and its cost. Now, with the majority of outsourcing deals, you get to negotiate. This allows you to customize the deal. Still, you can change this plan if your needs or your workload changes. If you need some additional support, you can ask for it. This way you pay more and end up getting more. The same goes the other way around. Remember, handling this in-house would be less convenient (hiring, firing, moving to a different office, etc.). This is simply more elegant.
In conclusion
In the end, when dealing with specialized tasks, it’s always for the best to leave everything to specialists. Trying to have more control is great but how much control do you really need and, more importantly, how much control can you actually handle (from administrative and managerial standpoints). With all of this in mind, going for managed IT services can be a proper game-changer. The list above contains some of the strongest arguments but it’s far from complete. In other words, the advantages may just be too numerous to count.
