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Strategic IT: The Blueprint for Business Growth
If there is one thing that all modern businesses share, it is a significant reliance on technology. However, this reliance can become a substantial liability when businesses lack the in-house skills to fully leverage their technological advantages and ensure smooth operations. Unfortunately, addressing this issue becomes increasingly challenging with each passing year.
According to a recent survey, approximately 90% of IT hiring managers reported difficulty finding skilled candidates for technology roles in the past year. This means that the vast majority of businesses are grappling with significant technology skills deficiencies. Unless they find alternative solutions, these challenges will persist.
This is precisely where Managed IT Services comes into play. It offers businesses on-demand access to IT expertise and services tailored to meet their immediate needs. Moreover, it offers the opportunity to adopt a strategic IT approach that can drive and accelerate scalability.
In this article, we examine the pivotal role managed IT services plays in fostering rapid business growth. We will explore IT strategies for streamlining operations, fortifying data security, and enhancing efficiency, showcasing how expertly managed IT services positions businesses for success.
Reducing IT Overhead and Streamlining Operations
One of the biggest challenges most businesses face in developing an intelligent IT strategy is reconciling their budgetary constraints. Managed IT solves this problem by providing the necessary skills and services at a lower cost compared to using exclusively an in-house IT staff. Moreover, it ensures long-term cost predictability, crucial for future strategic planning.
However, these benefits only scratch the surface. Businesses also profit from streamlining their operations through collaboration with a managed service provider (MSP). Outsourcing IT functions enables businesses to redirect resources towards core competencies, such as elevating customer service and delivering superior products and services. This underscores the value of adopting a strategic IT approach with MSP support to drive growth.
Fortifying Data Security
Working with an MSP can also help a business keep its data secure and prevent catastrophic cybersecurity lapses. Maintaining control of business data and preventing intrusions is a prerequisite for business growth. Considering 46% of all data breaches impact businesses with fewer than 1,000 employees, it is evident that this is an issue every business should take seriously. It is not just a problem that affects large organizations. However, few small and mid-sized businesses have the resources necessary to fortify their data security by themselves.
Partnering with an MSP gives businesses access to round-the-clock security monitoring, along with advanced cybersecurity knowledge and techniques that would otherwise be unavailable. Additionally, MSPs can provide employee cybersecurity training, conduct attack simulations to enhance readiness, and offer real-time remediation services. Acquiring these capabilities would otherwise require staffing a network security operations center around the clock, which would impose a significant drain on the business’s resources.
Enhancing Operational Efficiency
Managed IT services also contribute to improved business efficiency in various ways. One of the most significant benefits is the proactive technology management approach. By utilizing real-time monitoring, an MSP can identify IT issues and resolve them before they lead to significant downtime. Additionally, they proactively identify networking bottlenecks and outdated hardware, allowing for intelligent technology refresh schedules. This ensures that businesses allocate their IT budget towards hardware upgrades that enhance operational efficiency, rather than unnecessary technology upgrades driven solely by depreciation schedules.
MSPs also contribute to improving operational efficiency by providing more responsive help desk services. This ensures that employees do not experience unnecessary delays when IT issues interrupt their work. MSPs achieve this in two ways. Firstly, they typically employ more experienced support agents on their help desks, as they gain expertise from serving diverse clients over a short period. Secondly, MSPs have immediate access to a wealth of data generated by their monitoring infrastructure. This enables agents to quickly identify the root cause of an employee’s issue, particularly when it originates elsewhere within the business’s infrastructure.
Smoothing Transitions to New Technologies
An MSP can also serve as a valuable ally for businesses transitioning workflows to incorporate newer technologies. By providing the necessary expertise and planning capabilities, an MSP can minimize the disruption often associated with technology upgrades and transitions. For instance, upgrading a business’s preferred desktop operating system to a newer version can be a process fraught with potential disruptions. Issues such as hardware and software incompatibility, as well as employee inexperience, can complicate such transitions. MSPs mitigate these risks by leveraging their extensive experience to manage the process effectively.
Additionally, MSPs can serve as a valuable source of knowledge for businesses in their strategic technology planning. For example, an MSP may have prior experience working with a specific technology that a business is considering. They can share this knowledge to assist the business in making informed, future-focused technology decisions and help them avoid common pitfalls. In contrast, on-staff technology experts would be unlikely to offer such insights unless they have recently been recruited from a competitor or a similar business.
On-Demand Scalability
Lastly, MSPs provide businesses with on-demand technology scalability to capitalize on growth opportunities. For instance, if a business launches a product that unexpectedly gains significant traction, it may need to rapidly scale up operations. Managing manpower challenges alone can be a major hurdle. However, when faced with the additional task of swiftly expanding the business’s technology infrastructure and the staff managing it, the situation can quickly become a nightmare.
With an MSP involved, the business can concentrate on preparing to seize every opportunity without concerns about whether their IT infrastructure can keep up. The MSP will manage the provisioning of new hardware, network resources, and scale assigned support staff as needed. This capability is perhaps the most direct way that managed IT can facilitate business growth, as such growth would be nearly impossible otherwise.
Reliable Managed IT Specialists
By now, the numerous benefits that an MSP brings to a business should be evident, particularly in terms of enabling and driving growth. However, businesses should not partner with just any MSP if they expect to maximize their rewards.
Selecting the right MSP is crucial, as it can significantly impact the effectiveness and success of the partnership. Businesses must carefully evaluate potential MSPs based on their expertise, reliability, responsiveness, and ability to align with the organization’s goals and values. Only by choosing a well-suited MSP can businesses truly unlock the full potential of managed IT services and reap the maximum benefits for their growth and success.
Outsource IT provides a range of services under the managed IT services umbrella, including technology planning, monitoring, cybersecurity, cloud management, and productivity solutions. We have experienced multidisciplinary experts on staff capable of handling any technology task a business may require. To learn more about our Managed IT services, reach out to one of our knowledgeable account managers today.
