Could your company reduce frustration and optimize spend by using managed IT services?

IT is a relatively expensive business necessity. Gartner forecasts global IT spending to hit $4.2 trillion this year, growing about 9 percent. At this pace, IT spending appears to accelerate ahead of revenue expectations. A survey conducted by Flexera found that, on average, businesses spend 8.2 percent of their revenue on IT. Depending on the organization, IT spending could amount to thousands or even millions of dollars each year.

Such figures portray IT as a heavy financial burden, which is true for some companies. However, entrepreneurs are always trying practical new ways to minimize IT overheads without compromising performance. Outsourcing IT tasks to managed services providers (MSPs) has become an increasingly attractive solution for optimizing IT costs while reducing technology frustrations. Could an MSP be the right choice for your business, and if so, how? 

Optimize IT labor spend

Delegating day-to-day IT tasks to a third party means that the business can comfortably run with a much smaller internal IT team, or even none at all. On average, an IT professional asks for about $80,000 in annual salary with benefits. While having an MSP may be around the same price point annually, there are additional advantages. Instead of paying one internal IT professional, an MSP offers an entire team of IT experts that delivers security, business continuity, multiple help desk staff, and a depth of knowledge.

In addition to reducing labor and benefit costs, enlisting managed services also eliminates other staffing-related headaches, such as onboarding, training, absenteeism, and turnover. An MSP doesn’t call in sick or take vacation so loaded costs are included. 

Maximizes employee productivity

Your IT team can easily get bogged down by work, especially if the department is shorthanded or underskilled. Hiring an MSP frees up the IT staff from mundane, tedious, manual tasks to more meaningful mission-driven jobs. Plus, managed IT gives you access to highly skilled expertise and advanced technical tools that would otherwise be cost-prohibited.

Stabilizes your IT budget

IT budgeting is a complex process. Besides working out recurring IT expenses, you also have to calculate and optimize the costs of achieving long-term and short-term digital performance objectives. And even despite a high level of precision planning in budgeting, you may still hit financial speedbumps down the road.

However, you can take some guesswork out of the equation through managed services. MSPs charge a flat monthly rate for each of their solution packages. This makes the budget more predictable and easier to draft, giving you more control and flexibility in directing cash flow.

Curbs IT-related business disruptions

IT downtime is taxing in so many ways. For instance, downtime can cripple the availability of crucial trade resources, grinding business processes to a halt and inevitably resulting in financial damages. Depending on your organization’s reliance on IT, just a few minutes of downtime could mean losses on the scale of thousands of dollars.

A managed IT services provider helps your business avoid costly downtime by taking a proactive approach rather than a break-fix IT maintenance approach. Just think of how much money and time you’d save if your enterprise wasn’t constantly bombarded with system crashes and glitches.

Optimizes your IT investment

An MSP can guide your IT investment decisions to optimize costs while increasing performance through IT consulting and advisory services. With their vast wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry, MSPs have a few tricks up their sleeves for making this happen. A streamlined IT system costs much less to run and closely aligns with the organization’s technology needs.

Working with an MSP is an easy and practical way to reduce annual IT spend and improve the bottom line. Talk to KME Systems to learn more about optimizing spend while protecting people, profit, and corporate reputation. We offer professional managed IT services with your business goals in mind while improving your IT’s performance, security, and reliability.