5 Reasons Why You Should Consider a Managed IT Service Provider Before You Employ Your Next IT-Person / CIO / CTO

As we move into the second quarter of 2017 the number of cloud software solutions, integrations and applications your business is relying on will be ever increasing. So, having reliable IT is essential. Your business continuity relies on it and your customer's livelihood relies on it. If your systems are down or not communicating, your business is down.

It's as plain and simple as that... 

Therefore, it's a necessity to have someone on hand to keep your infrastructure and communications running at peak efficiency. You need somebody to guide your overall IT strategy and deal with the day to day challenges that arise.

Ways to achieve this:

Employ an IT admin / CIO / CTO

Let one of your current employees pick up the slack, hire somebody to become a dedicated IT-administrator and or a full-time CTO.

Contract a Managed IT service that includes strategy and future proofing

Place the problem in the hands of a company that specialises in looking after small to medium size businesses that has access to a large range of interchangeable technicians for a fixed monthly fee. 

So, should you hire or outsource?

A lot of businesses make the decision to employ or pass the responsibility onto an existing member of staff.

Potentially they might feel that is the easiest/cheapest option, but they might be making a costly mistake.

Here we give you five reasons why taking on the responsibility of managing your IT in-house can be a risk and problematic - and why outsourcing your IT to a Managed Service Provider can save you a lot of time and money. 

First reason: They can cost a lot

The reason why most companies decide to manage their IT in-house is because they think it will be cheaper. But they couldn't be more wrong.

Depending on the level of your hire price, costs can escalate

• It starts at around $50,000 a year for a competent IT-administrator.

• For $80,000 to $150,000 a year, you'll get a quality IT manager who has some good experience, good knowledge, and is fairly versatile in a variety of technology problems.

• At $150,000 plus is where you'll be able to hire a CIO or CTO who will require a team of administrators. 

Outsourcing your IT-management to a Managed Service Provider is a lot cheaper. You'll just pay a flat fee, and that's it. 

Many small companies save up to 50% to 75% of the costs by outsourcing their IT to a Managed Service Provider, instead of hiring an internal IT-person. And they get better service that's always available in return. 

Second reason: They cannot be there for you 24/7

When you hire an in-house person or one man band IT Admin you're dependant on one single person. And that one person won't always be there. 

They will have to take time off, take sick leave and holidays, need to visit the doctor or they can get stuck at home as their children have sick days. If you run into a problem and your IT person is not available, then your business is in trouble. You can't contact anybody to help you. And you'll have to wait until they are back in action to fix it.

When you outsource your IT-support and management, you won't encounter this problem.

As the Managed Service Provider who you trust to execute on your day to day IT has a full team of consultants. There will always be someone to help you - no matter what happens.

Third reason: Technology is too complex to be mastered by one single person

Even if you're willing to pay top dollar and hire a superstar, or you have someone that's been there so long they have the inner workings of your business etched in their brain. This still leaves you exposed as you only have one person on staff. And as you would know it can become a problem.

One person beavering away by themselves can never offer the same level of redundancy that a team of consultants backed up by managers and operational staff can.

There are many different pieces to the IT puzzle. Nobody can claim to be across all of these. Each consultant has a specific skillset. They are a whiz at some fields, and weak at others.

When your business depends on one IT-person, you are putting yourself at the strengths and weaknesses of that person. If they are not strong at a certain discipline, then your systems will be vulnerable to those types of problems. 

You need a team of experts to cover all weaknesses and vulnerabilities. 

Fourth reason: They don't have exposure to a wide range of issues and technology moves fast

An internal IT-person will generally only be working on the IT infrastructure in a single company, they will not have the advantage of being exposed to a multitude of situations. 

Even for a managed service provider, it's a day to day challenge to keep up with the latest opportunities and developments of what is happening in the IT world. 

So, unless you are investing significant time and money into the training and development of your IT person, it won't be long before their limited technical knowledge is outdated, and technology has left them behind.

A Managed Service Provider is across the IT issues for numerous businesses. And because they're consistently being exposed to a myriad of problems and challenges they will always be on the pulse. They deal with IT in small to large companies in a range of different industries, so they can advise on what the current best practices are. They have seen what does and doesn't work so they can quickly solve your problems.

Fifth reason: When things are running smoothly, you don't need them around

The job of your internal IT Administrator is to keep things working and deal with the day to day issues as they arrive. But if they are doing their job well, potentially there will be no problems to fix so you don't really need them around.

So, in order to keep their job or appear useful an internal IT Administrator will do whatever they can to make them seem necessary and important to the business.

Instead of making things simpler, they'll come up with complex systems that will require them to operate it for you. 

When you outsource your IT management, you don't have that problem.

A Managed Service provider is on your side - their incentive is to have your IT working seamlessly so that the monthly service charge covers their cost and delivers tangible value and peace of mind to their clients.