Today’s uncertain economic landscape, coinciding with increased customer demands for fast and innovative service, has many businesses looking for ways to get the most of their IT budget. An increasingly common way organizations are achieving this goal is by partnering with an experienced IT managed services provider (MSP) to help with everything from managing their enterprise infrastructure to implementing the latest technologies.
Although the benefits of working with an MSP can be immediate and obvious to your IT team, pitching the idea to the C-suite may bring up a host of new questions about the rationale, the cost, and what is expected to change with the new potential partnership. Fortunately, the use of an MSP to complement an internal team has been well established over the years, with experienced partners that bring the tools and staff needed to streamline processes, reduce costs, and demonstrate a real return on investment.
So just what can an MSP do for your organization and what facts should you include in your C-suite pitch? Let’s get into it!
What is a managed service provider?
One of the first questions your organization’s C-suite may ask is just what exactly an MSP is and the types of services that they can provide for your business. In short, an MSP is a company made up of professionals that are dedicated to helping businesses like yours run their IT services and infrastructure more efficiently and effectively.
An MSP’s staff become an extension of your own internal IT staff, bringing the knowledge and ability to deliver a wide variety of IT services, including everything from hybrid cloud solutions and infrastructure management to information security, help desk support, and system monitoring and alerting. An MSP can deliver these IT computing and support services on the customer’s premises, in the MSP’s own data center, or in a third-party data center.
What are the benefits of a managed service provider partnership?
The applications, services, and infrastructure that your employees use to serve your customers are an extension of your brand. They’re often the things that customers associate with your brand experience, including factors such as how well a web application runs or how fast and thoroughly help desk tickets are resolved.
However, managing the maintenance, upkeep, and compliance of your IT ecosystem can be a complex and costly undertaking. For example, your IT team must regularly monitor for changes in security and compliance standards, ensure that software and hardware are up to date, and facilitate the introduction of new services and tools. At the end of the day, keeping your IT infrastructure, end user hosts, networking equipment, and other applications operational and secure requires a lot of time and resources.
An MSP simplifies each of these responsibilities and much more. Some of the common services that businesses leverage with an MSP include:
- Dedicated security professionals and tools
- Single points of contact for issues
- 24/7/365 help desk and support availability
- Around-the-clock alerting and monitoring for key systems and services
- Continuous compliance, patching, and update support
- Backup and disaster recovery services
- Experts knowledgeable about IaaS, SaaS, and PaaS offerings
In addition, MSPs are often able to scale their services based on your business needs, so you are only paying for the support you need.
What’s the ROI of working with an MSP?
C-suite executives have to constantly balance the needs of their customers with their organization’s profitability, security, and stability. The decision to partner with an MSP addresses each of these needs, offering your business:
- Increased reliability, security, and performance to prevent costly downtime or security incidents that could weaken customer trust
- More time for internal staff to focus on specialized, strategic internal initiatives
- Access to experts across a range of IT domains and systems when you need them, without having to move through the usual hiring and training processes
- The ability to scale up and down services as business needs change, with upfront pricing
With the right MSP, your organization will find a strong ROI across your enterprise, beginning with scalability, reliability, and access to IT experts and continuing to ongoing access to innovative tools and services. Together, all of these make your business more productive, secure, and nimble—benefits that all C-suite executives are looking for in any investment.
It’s time to take the step into an MSP partnership.
In addition to all of the basic benefits of an MSP, an industry-leading managed services provider like VectorUSA also brings the dynamic range of tools, advanced processes, and decades of experience to the table to make the transition as smooth and as productive as possible.
For more information on how managed IT services can help your business, read our guide Infrastructure You Need to Take Your Business Digital.
Share this article
Ready to unlock the power of your technology?
