Complete Guide to Managed IT Services
More businesses than ever are reaping the benefits of managed services today. Yet many businesses still don’t know understand how managed IT services in particular can help their business to grow, improve profitability and increase productivity in the workplace. With new features and benefits, companies are benefiting from world-class technology systems and support at a lower cost than providing those services fully in-house.
You may be wondering what managed IT services are and why they are trending with businesses. Most businesses today rely heavily on IT systems for day to day operations. Many IT providers offer third party services that professionally manage your IT support requirements at predictable fixed costs. The quality of your IT infrastructure can significantly impact the success your business and productivity levels within the workplace and expose you to risks to both security and stability that can result in costly downtime and lost data. Leveraging managed IT services offers a way to improve the quality and management of your IT infrastructure without the need for internal technology management.
What are managed IT services?
Simply put, managed IT outsources the management of your IT systems to a third-party professional team that oversees and supports your business. Services available from managed IT providers include hardware and software management, security systems, backup and recovery and cloud applications. With managed IT services, you pay a fixed monthly fee for professional management of your technology infrastructure and gain peace of mind.
How can it benefit your small business?
Here are some common benefits that businesses realize.
- Provide regular maintenance and monitoring of your IT systems
- Create backup and recovery plans to minimize damage if a disaster were to occur in-house
- Prevent issues from occurring for reduced downtime
- Provide access to expertise with up-to-date certifications at a fraction of the cost of hiring in-house support
- Develop tailored recommendations based on technology needs of your business
- Relieve internal staff and allow them to focus on more productive areas of your business
- Access cutting edge applications and services to enhance your working tools
- Optimize IT service operations and uptime
- Proactively manage your IT systems with a team of on-hand experts to help
- Ensure technology is up-to-date enabling your team to be more productive
Why use managed IT services?
Managed IT providers offer the resources your business needs to effectively manage your ever-growing network. They ensure that your IT systems can support your growth and reduce the internal IT management burden.
Updates, backups and security are all essential parts of IT systems to keep your business running smoothly. Using managed IT services ensure systems are regularly updated to drive business productivity, that regular data backups are made with a recovery plan in place to reduce risk and that your networks are secure from external and user-generated threats. Managed IT can also provide user help desk support and on-site response to ensure that business disruptions are minimized.
As a result, you can focus on other areas of our business and be assured you are covered with a solution that ensures minimal downtime, maximum productively, and reduced costs.
What does it cost?
The specific cost of managed IT services depends on the specific services you select to use and on the size of your network and user base. Most managed services offer a fixed monthly fee that is less than the cost of staffing IT internally for small and medium-sized businesses.
If you’d like to learn more about how managed IT can benefit your business, contact us. We offer an on-site technology assessment to understand your specific IT situation and will only recommend managed services if they are cost efficient and effective for your business.