Is Your Managed IT Provider Truly Beneficial for Strategy?

Technology is always evolving, and alongside it should be your IT service provider doing everything they can to stay up to date and ahead of the curve.

Regularly, managed IT service providers cover basic support functions to ensure your systems are staying up to date and functional at all times. But, taking a longer-range look at how your company uses technology can help to create long-term success, potentially aiding the growth of your company also.

In this day and age, every business utilises IT. But you may not have had the time to take a step back and gain some perspective on the strategic benefits it can bring.

The Basics – What Your Managed IT Service Provider Should Be Doing

Managed IT Service providers usually conduct a range of different essential functions. This can range from providing real-time technical support to employees in your workplace, to ensuring all of your IT systems are running smoothly at all times.

Most MSPs will provide an IT help desk where your employees can go if they are facing an IT-related problem, freeing up their time for their day-to-day tasks and ensuring they remain productive and able to work.

Other tasks your MSP may provide as a basic service include carrying out backups and system maintenance and taking care of your system security. Offloading these tasks to an IT service provider frees up your time to take care of the day-to-day functioning of your business, and allows your employees to focus on their core responsibilities.

Strategic Partners – What Your Managed IT Service Provider Could Be Doing

IT is quickly becoming the most important part of a business. From streamlining operations to ensuring your information is secure and protected, it’s important to employ an MSP you trust to grow alongside your business.

Knowing the ins and outs of how IT can be of great benefit to your business is your managed service provider’s responsibility, and they should be able to offer you information on what has worked for others in their experience, and what could work for you in order to grow your business and increase profits. Seizing the power of technology and making it work for you and your business has become a valuable asset, and your IT-managed service provider should be able to guide you along the way.

A strategically-minded MSP will know how to invest in technology in order to become a valuable asset. They will take their relevant experience in the field and use it to review your current operations, and provide an assessment of your technology and how it works, and could be working better.

They’ll assess the latest developments in the field, and review your system in order to advise what hardware and software may add value. This includes your network infrastructure, and how it responds to how staff and customers operate today. With a strategic plan concerning streamlining and improving the operations of your mobile, wireless and VPN networks, you’ll be able to clearly see the communication, speed and customer service benefits of operating reliably 24/7.

A good partner will not just sit and watch as you still use your Windows XP machines. They will recommend you upgrade from Windows XP to later systems.

Why Should You Outsource your MSP

Offloading the management and maintenance of your IT services means peace of mind. It’s likely that even the most un-tech savvy business owner is literate enough to make do with an in-house employee to manage their IT services. But running tech strategically means looking at every aspect of your IT infrastructure, which can be difficult to do in-house.

Teams in many different roles and with many different responsibilities may find it difficult to spend much time strategically assessing their systems and how they can be improved. Hiring a managed IT service provider allows you to gain years of industry insight and experience for your team.

An experienced managed IT service provider can help you consider your business priorities and asses which areas of your IT infrastructure to change or improve upon to greater align with your goals. They’ll take a longer-term view of your business operations and will be able to use their experience to suggest ways to design flexible systems that will propel your operations into the future.

This will allow you to think more strategically about the projects and investments you can move forward with. In turn, your team will become more efficient, getting the most from your investment in your technology infrastructure and management.

The support of an experienced MSP is essential. Strategic planning will allow your business to grow and thrive, rather than simply being supported.