The long-term goals of any IT department can usually be boiled down to two objectives: reduce costs and increase efficiency. When businesses can accomplish both these objectives simultaneously, that’s a major win.
Luckily, by leveraging the expertise and stability of a managed service provider (MSP), organizations can quickly improve their IT performance, achieve more business goals, and reduce costs.
Let’s take a closer look at three ways managed service providers can help with IT cost management.
1. MSPs Change the Math on Personnel Costs
When an organization chooses to rely on in-house personnel for all their IT needs, they are responsible for 100% of the hiring, training, onboarding, and salary costs of those team members. By outsourcing some IT responsibilities to an MSP, these costs can be significantly reduced.
[Learn more about the Managed Services offered by ATSG.]
Hiring for IT positions can be a headache. Thankfully, a managed service provider can take some of this burden off the shoulders of their client. In the areas that IT manages, the MSP takes over hiring responsibilities and all the costs associated with them, including recruiting, interviewing, and vetting.
Using an MSP can also help reduce overhead related to training and onboarding staff. Instead of spending time and money developing training procedures to ensure internal staff effectively manages the company’s infrastructure, they can assign much of this process to the MSP.
The MSP will ensure that their own team of experts are fully trained, and have sufficient staff resources to meet service demands. Essentially, they cover the cost of training so you don’t have to.
Partnering with an MSP also yields several other staff-related benefits. With a reduced need for internal IT personnel to maintain core infrastructure, businesses are free to either reallocate staff to other projects or reduce the total number of IT staff (thereby significantly reducing costs).
By using a managed service provider to do some of the work of existing personnel, IT departments also end up with a more transparent budget. The organization can allocate funds based on the clearly delineated services agreed upon with the MSP, rather than paying employees who are less flexible and have less clear ROI. In other words, with an MSP, you’re paying for services instead of salaries.
2. MSPs Reduce Downtime and Business Disruptions
Many businesses experience loss of productivity due to the temporary failure of information technology systems. This is an expected result in an increasingly complex IT environment that sometimes requires 24/7 maintenance.
In order to ensure around-the-clock service while protecting against downtime, businesses would have to make costly investments in staff. Many businesses are finding that, while trying to reach a higher level of service, their existing resources can’t meet the challenge.
That’s where MSPs come into play. They have scalable resources in place to handle a variety of extreme service scenarios. They also have the expertise to manage the complexities inherent in today’s IT infrastructures. In addition, MSPs can often identify and resolve other, less obvious inefficiencies that can adversely affect a business.
To ensure that an MSP is equipped to meet your downtime reduction and service delivery goals, look closely at their service-level-agreement. SLAs serve as insurance that the MSP will meet its commitment to your organization.
3. MSPs Bring Unique Knowledge to the Table
For businesses looking to improve their IT maturity quickly, MSPs provide a great solution. In addition to freeing up internal staff to pursue a more strategic approach to IT, MSPs also have an enormous amount of experience and knowledge that can be helpful in making this pivot.
A good MSP will be able to provide some degree of support to a business’s internal staff in their transition to more strategic, business-aligned positions. On top of this, their experience working with clients across many industries means they have unique expertise that could resonate throughout your organization.
The MSP’s knowledge can also come in handy during key organizational transitions, ranging from acquisitions to mergers to other instances where effective change management is crucial. They can help make these processes more seamless by providing a strong IT foundation. Partnering with an MSP means you always have someone in your corner, ready with best practices and actionable advice.
For organizations looking to keep costs down while improving efficiency, MSPs provide turnkey solutions. Businesses can leverage them to reallocate or reduce internal staff. They can also take advantage of the proven expertise of MSPs to help further strategic initiatives or transitions. All of this also comes with the technological resources for managing and maintaining key IT infrastructure.
With an MSP, IT operations become more effective, IT costs become more predictable, and business disruptions are minimized.
Want to learn what an MSP can do for you? Contact us to learn more.
Comments