Managed IT Services are a powerful way for you to take control of your company’s network, ensuring top-notch support, greater employee productivity, enterprise-grade security and rock-solid data backups. However, many small and midsize business owners hesitate to investigate the benefits of outsourcing their IT operations to a Managed Service Provider (MSP), most often because of myths they’ve heard through the grapevine or a bad past experience. Let’s take a look at some of these myths.
#1: Managed Service Providers are more expensive than on-site IT staff.
Some small and midsize business owners have never looked at Managed IT Services as an option, thinking that Managed Service Providers will cost them more than a single employee. After all, shouldn’t it cost more to hire an entire team, as opposed to one person? The fact is, a well-trained IT professional can handle much more than the scope of a single small business. Because of the ability of Managed Service Providers to properly scale their workloads, a contract with a reputable MSP will run far less than the cost of a salary and benefits for a full-time employee. In a business with less than 100 computers, a full-time IT professional will get bored, and you’ll be paying a premium salary for someone to be twiddling their thumbs.
#2: Managed Service Providers won’t be as responsive as on-site IT staff.
A Managed Service Provider serves as both your help desk for day-to-day issues, as well as your CTO for guiding the direction of IT overall. Because of this, large projects and daily problems both get resolved quicker than they would by a single on-site IT person. In many SMBs with a single IT employee, projects and infrastructure tend to take a back-seat to putting out small fires constantly, which in turn leads to even more problems, as equipment ages, maintenance goes undone, and big picture ideas get set aside for daily support. Conversely, some IT professionals will be annoyed by the little stuff while trying to focus on larger projects, which hurts your employees’ productivity as they’re forced to wait before having their issues resolved.
By partnering with a company of IT professionals, you can be assured that your day-to-day problems are resolved quickly, without sacrificing the time and attention needed to properly maintain, upgrade, and administer your entire network. At Layered Systems, we’re available 24/7 to ensure your business stays up and running.
#3: Outsourcing my IT means I won’t hear from them until there’s a disaster.
While some outsourced IT providers rely on what’s known as “break-fix,” in which they keep a hands-off approach until something breaks (at which point they bill steep hourly rates to fix problems), a good MSP will offer a flat-rate contract. This means that you pay us to keep everything running smoothly every day. The fewer fires we have to put out, the more profitable we are. This incentivizes us to keep your network as clean, fast, and efficient as possible, unlike break-fix companies who only make money when things are going wrong! By spending the time to perform proactive maintenance, patching, virus scans, etc., we minimize the amount of time we have to spend troubleshooting problems, which in turn keeps your employees working efficiently longer.
#4: Switching to an MSP means giving up control over my network.
While some Managed Service Providers do “force” their customers into certain network designs or vendors, we keep an open-mind. We have decades of combined experience to ensure that whatever your vision, we have the skills and know-how to make it work. We work with clients who have existing relationships with certain vendors, as well as other clients who just want the cheapest option. Whatever your preference, we’re willing and able to manage and design networks that work for you. Of course, if your network is aging, we’ll design a plan to bring it up-to-date, within your budget and scaled appropriately. If it’s not in the budget though, we’ve got the experience to get the most out of older systems and keep them as efficient as possible.
We also provide monthly reports regarding network and systems health to business owners. These reports are easily readable, are customizable, and provide valuable insight into the state of your business from an IT perspective. This can include patch health, hardware age, internet usage, service ticket history, etc. This lets you stay on top of your network, and makes it much easier to make informed decisions about IT spending.
#5: We like to keep things local; outsourcing our IT means talking to someone halfway around the globe.
We’re a local, Northeast Wisconsin company, serving local, Northeast Wisconsin businesses. Our scope of business is within an hour’s drive of our location. If you have an emergency, you need someone there as soon as possible to get working on it. This is difficult to do if your technicians are somewhere in India or the Philippines. Not us! We’re based out of Green Bay, Wisconsin – every employee. “Outsourcing” can be a dirty word in a hard-working community, but rest assured, by outsourcing your IT to Layered Systems, you’re keeping it local, supporting another local business. It’s these homegrown partnerships that have made us the strong company we are today, and allow us to thrive with our partners’ success.
Switching your IT support to a Managed Service Provider will provide almost endless benefits, from reduced monthly costs, to better support, to better planning for the future, to a wider range of experience and expertise available to better serve you. If your on-site IT guy just isn’t cutting it or is costing you too much, or if you’re stuck with a break-fix provider and unpredictable network problems and costly bills, it’s time to consider Managed IT Services from Layered Systems. Contact us today to learn more about the benefits of switching your IT services to Layered Systems.
