9 Reasons Your Business Needs Managed IT Services

Businesses these days need a more reliable source of IT support. Historically, companies often used a method known as break/fix—if your business technology were to break, a technician would come in to fix it. While this approach still works (kind of), there are many advantages to using the managed services model.

Minimal Downtime

The break/fix approach fundamentally involves waiting around for your technology to encounter an issue or malfunction and die. As a result, there will always be downtime associated with the break/fix approach. Managed services, on the other hand, are designed to minimize downtime as much as possible by detecting and resolving issues before they manifest and cause problems. With managed services, professionals remotely monitor the components of your infrastructure for incoming threats or complications. These proactive actions provide the technician with more time to identify and mitigate the risks that your business would otherwise discover once a problem manifested.

Optimized Functionality and Efficiency

In today’s business environment, an organization’s leadership must juggle many responsibilities, all the while putting out any fires that start blazing. At times, some duties are pushed back in favor of what may appear to be more pressing business needs. One commonly postponed duty is the management and maintenance of a business’ IT infrastructure and solutions; however, this is one of the last things that a company should delay. Efficient and functional technology is key to a business’ success. Don’t get caught needing IT service when your business needs to be concentrating on clients, service, and sales. A managed service provider (MSP) like Keystone will ensure that your solutions are updated to allow for optimized functionality.

Know What’s Coming

Our monitoring services run daily checks on the critical systems on each computer and server. There is a good chance the health of a failing component will decline slowly over time. With our monitoring services, we can be alerted in advance and have an opportunity to react before the complete failure of the device. The typical break-fix IT provider benefits from your technology breaking down, and they will only be interested in fixing the present problem, not preventing it in the long run. We cannot predict the future, but most of our managed customers spend less time working on their network, save money by reducing support expenses, and improve office productivity. By being proactive, you can avoid all the fallout that so often comes from technological failures.

Remote Care

Under an MSP’s care, you can be sure that your tools are ready for you to use when you need them. Most of these services can be provided remotely, saving you the time you would have to wait for a technician to arrive on-site. However, one of our professionals will be deployed to your location if need be to resolve an issue that cannot be resolved remotely.

Budgets

Many businesses are worried about the cost of IT services. MSPs offer a set monthly rate that is based on the companies’ service level agreement. A set price gives you a predictable budget rather than worrying how much something will cost you when it goes wrong. Often this cost is LESS in the long-run than it would be if you paid for each fix individually.

Ability to Adapt to Change

Your business might have only a small workforce today, but what will it look like in the next five, or even ten years? As time passes, you’ll grow your business, expand your services, and even hire new employees. Will your business model be able to sustain this type of growth? Your IT infrastructure should also be versatile enough to handle this growth, but unless you’ve built flexibility into it from the ground up, you’ll be in trouble. Scalable managed services allow your organization to grow and expand your services as needed.

Faster Implementation

Let’s say that you want to implement a new solution that could potentially improve the way your business functions. During the process, though, you encounter all sorts of roadblocks that make it difficult to make progress. If you outsource the project implementation to a managed IT company, you don’t have to worry about having enough time to handle your in-house management and the new project at the same time.

Experienced Staff

Hiring a full team of experienced IT technicians can be an expensive blow to your budget. This might make compromising on less-qualified individuals appealing, but you should never settle for anything less than the best. Instead of hiring someone and hoping that they have the technical skills for the job, you can reach out to an outsourced IT company and get a near-guarantee that they will have the training and experience required to resolve most, if not all, of your technology-related troubles. This usually comes at less cost than hiring an internal team as well (a win-win!)

A Single Point of Contact

Imagine having to make countless phone calls to your multitude of vendors. You could be on the phone all day trying to sort out arrangements, which keeps you from performing your responsibilities as a business owner. Instead of just accepting this fate, an outsourced IT provider like Keystone can act as a single point of contact for your business’ technological needs. We can reach out to any vendors you need to contact so that you can stay focused on your business.

Technology is rarely the average business owner’s strong suit, so why not leave that area to experts? By adding managed IT services to your business process, you allow yourself to focus on what you’re really good at. Keystone would love to help with this transition and become your partner in technology. Have specific questions? One of our consultants would be happy to assist you.