Are you interested in learning about the benefits of managed IT services? Today, our expert IT consultants explore this topic in detail. But before we do, let’s quickly cover the basics. What exactly is managed IT?
Managed IT services are IT services that you outsource to an IT service provider. IT service providers can support various processes and whole departments. Some of the functions an IT service provider can carry out for you are:
- Technical support, such as phone and web technical assistance
- Server and IT infrastructure management and maintenance
- Remote monitoring of your network to maintain security and stability
- IT consulting.
With these services in mind, below, we will look at several reasons why managed IT is one of the key tech trends right now and what businesses are gaining by outsourcing their IT.
Focus on Your Business Goals
One of the biggest benefits is that you can focus on your business goals by outsourcing your IT.
When you start to expand, your focus can be pulled away from the opportunities coming into your business as you’re too busy developing the infrastructure you need to manage rising demand. IT systems being one such element of your infrastructure.
But with managed IT, you don’t first need to carry out a large IT project and employ more technicians to meet the higher workload. Instead, you simply agree on the service capacity you want with your IT service provider, and that’s all: no change projects, expensive equipment, or costly technicians.
This means you can save weeks, even months that would have been invested in operational development, allowing you to progress towards your business goals faster. By outsourcing business processes to an IT service provider, your workforce can focus on what matters for your business.
Think about it.
Your current IT engineers, managers, and other team members could achieve a lot more if they focused on your key business activities — those that generate more profit for your business and make your business more competitive. Managed IT helps them do that.
Instant Access to Highly-Skilled IT Experts
When you outsource to an IT service provider, you are not only gaining access to one or two IT technicians. You gain access to a company-wide pool of experts in network infrastructure, information security, cloud computing and more.
With access to such insights, your team members no longer have to take time off for training days or face the risk of being left behind. This means your business can continue progressing towards its goals, advancing its projects without any interruptions.
Optimising Your IT Systems
It isn’t easy to know exactly what your company needs to realise its goals. It is one thing to know that you need an application to target mobile devices. Still, it is another, knowing whether you should code it React, Kotlin, Objective-C, Swift, or Python, and what are the pros, cons, security and networking considerations for each?
After all, trends in IT pass like the blinking of an eye, and right now, one technology may be in vogue, but this time next year, no one knows what will happen. This is important because if you want to run a successful business, you need stable foundations. This means running technology that is still in use several years from now, receiving regular updates and patches and ensuring your business is secure.
Managed IT helps you identify the best opportunities for your IT systems, so that you can optimise your company for long-term success.
Operational Cost Savings
Once outsourced, every time you want to scale up your business, you won’t have to fork out millions on new staff, new equipment, and old consultants. Your profits can be put to better use, expanding your product range, enhancing your services, and finding more customers.
This will not only improve your ROI due to spending less on profit-losing activities and more on profit-gaining activities, but it will also make your business more agile. You no longer need to go through time-consuming and expensive change projects every time you want to reach a new profit target.
Your business will have the ability to make a decision and to get to work right away. Imagine the cumulative effect this will have on your business over several years compared to your slow competitors following the old ways of doing things.
Predictable Business Expenses
Another key benefit of outsourcing your IT services is the predictable expenses. There are no scary surprises, no expensive repair bills, just one subscription fee. This makes financial management and planning much easier for your business, meaning you can allocate more financial resources to key business projects.
Powerful System and Service Scalability
When scaling up your business doesn’t depend on how many IT technicians you can onboard, your business is free to grow at its natural rate. Removing the burden of expensive IT staff and outsourcing them allows you to save money while your business grows. By having more reserves to invest in business growth projects, your business could grow at an even faster rate.
Another point is that outsourcing grants your business flexibility: the flexibility to grow at your preferred speed. Every business leader knows that growing too fast and growing too slow is detrimental to your business’s future. Optimising your IT services for your particular business needs ensures your business follows the best path to success.
With managed IT, you simply adjust your service package to include more resources. Is your business growing, and do you need extra support? If so, increase your managed IT spend. Is your company scaling back, and you’re no longer in need of as much data storage and software management services? Downsize your managed IT service package. This doesn’t involve hire or firing, managing space or real estate or extra training. It’s as simple as calling up your managed IT service provider and discussing more support.
Advanced Cyber Security Safeguarding
Keeping your business online while maintaining the security of your files and content is imperative in this digital age. But with countless new viruses and exploits being released every day, it’s a minefield through which few businesses navigate unscathed. It only takes one hack, one mindless click of the mouse on the wrong icon on the wrong site, and your whole network has been compromised.
Hackers are experts at finding weaknesses in your computer network. Therefore, the best solution is to find those weaknesses before hackers do. Having a team of cyber security experts analyse your computer network, search for security gaps, and seal them off before the hackers arrive will avert a potential catastrophe.
Future Proof Your Organisation
We live in a rapidly transforming world, full of complexity and chaos, with little clarity and much confusion. The best solution to steer through it all is enlisting the support of experts, those who can see the dangers lurking on the horizon and point out a better route to your goals.
The benefit of an IT service organisation is that you are not only accessing one or two experts but a whole team of experts, specialists in multiple fields of IT — all working together to support your business reach its maximum potential.
If you want to make your business more agile and more competitive, more scalable and more efficient, then consider IT outsourcing. At Optimising IT, we offer a full range of IT outsourcing services, giving you complete flexibility and control over your IT services.
