Companies today use all the resources at their fingertips in order to optimize their business operations. At the forefront of this is making sure that your organization is outfitted with the right technology. Unfortunately however, too many companies get bogged down in the task of managing IT services. In many cases, your technology becomes more of a burden than a tool. If you’re experiencing any of these challenges or thoughts below – then it might be time for you to hire a managed IT services provider.

1. You’ve been hacked

Cybersecurity is one of the cornerstone services of any quality managed service provider.  It is often overlooked by in-house teams and often completely forgotten by companies who don’t have an IT department. However, the damage that a cyber attack can cause in an instant is staggering.

According to the ACSC Annual Cyber Threat Report 2020-21 cyber crime in Australia has reached an all time high. Some of the eye opening statistics include:

• More than 67,500 crime reports
• Reported cybercrime losses of over $33 billion
• >75% of reported incidents resulted in losses of information or money

Much like at the doctor’s office, cybercrime prevention is better than a cure. However, Managed IT service providers can take care of the entire spectrum of monitoring threats, defending attacks and helping you recover from disaster all without you having to lift a finger.

2. Your systems are down more than 0.1% of the year

The most important aspect of any network, product or service is availability. There are few things users hate more than being unable to access a product that they need. In fact, According to Gartner Insights, downtime can cost upwards of $5600 per minute. This extrapolates to a tumultuous $300k per hour.

Even more dangerous, is the damage that downtime does to your reputation. Indeed, downtime can cause you to lose current customers, but it can also greatly impact your ability to attract future prospects due to negative reviews and bad user experiences.

Managed IT Service providers aim to fulfill what is known as five-nines availability. This means that they aim for 99.999% uptime of your network. Such a target results in business operations that are available all of the time effectively – resulting in customer satisfaction and loyalty.

3. You want to reduce IT spending

Procuring an expert team means that you get to skip the headaches of building out an entire department. This means you get to skip the hiring process, avoid having to manage personalities and still reap all the benefits of having fully functioning business operations.

Ultimately, you save money by the huge jump in productivity as well as the direct savings of paying only for the services you require. Managed service providers can offer flexible packages that suit your exact needs. Furthermore, they will already own the necessary tooling to carry out the job so that you won’t have to waste money in acquiring any non-essential expensive equipment.

4. It’s time to scale

Your rapidly growing business will need to be outfitted with the appropriate technology to match the demand. These growing pains can become a major hindrance to your ability to properly serve customers in the fashion that you did when the demand was more manageable.

Of course, you can take on the challenge of hiring additional personnel to your team and gradually scale your operations. On the other hand, you can team up with a managed services provider to have a second team of qualified individuals at the ready. MSPs help you to see benefits and take action immediately as opposed to spending valuable time on costly research, development and implementation.

5. Your helpdesk is struggling to keep pace

Outsource customer support for your product so your core team can avoid costly distractions. Most managed service providers offer a help desk service to relieve your team of tech support calls once and for all. Ideally, you’ll want to find a 24 hour service with a fast response time since your customers will ultimately hold you responsible for the support they receive. Managed helpdesk assistants are experts in their field and serve as a timely resource in helping your users.

6. You want to migrate to the cloud

Maintaining all the functions of  your system after moving to the cloud can be quite the challenge. You’ll be best served with an experienced hand to carry you through the process – thus optimizing your cloud environment in a highly efficient manner.

In addition, managed service providers can go the extra mile in providing comprehensive testing, proactive monitoring, recovery and daily backups. Altogether, these services can ensure that your migration to the cloud is smooth and high-performant for years to come.

7. You want peace of mind 

The challenge in maintaining IT requirements for a business is that no company wants to do it – and why should you have to? Your business has a core function which it should be dedicating all of its energy and major resources toward; not struggling along with servers and networks.

Managed service providers are your silver bullet. You pay them a fixed fee – they make your IT problems go away. This is an extremely valuable relationship that can benefit your business both in the short and long term.