Why Do Businesses Engage Managed Service Providers?

One of the main reasons why businesses engage managed services providers is because IT personnel that don’t regularly have high volumes of tasks encounter incredibly time-consuming assignments, especially when acting as internal support for company employees. In short, there’s no such thing as an effective IT person with a lot of time. MSPs have the staffing resources required to address time-consuming and large-scale projects.

Sourcing Pricey Specialized Talent

Even as companies and their IT teams grow, in-house specialization often doesn’t make financial sense. A midsize business that wants to implement SD-WAN across multiple locations, for example, can gain access to necessary expertise through an MSP without footing the costs of hiring a new engineer for this narrow need.

Preventing & Responding to Problems

MSPs have access to technical information and live feeds to stop problems before the customer is aware they exist.

Here’s a real-world example:

• Apple decided not to actively support QuickTime anymore on existing endpoint devices like laptops and tablets.
• A bad actor hacked the outdated and unsupported QuickTime app via remote desktop and uploaded a virus.
• TPx’s IT staff received an alert about the vulnerability and realized the threat required an immediate response. Through remote desktop access, TPx removed the application from all active TPx customer computers.
• TPx notified customers after the threat had been neutralized.
• As a result of that immediate action, no TPx customers were hacked.

An IT generalist wouldn’t have access to data from a state-of-the-art security operations center (SOC) to identify the threat in real-time. Even if they somehow learned about the vulnerability, they wouldn’t have had the staffing required to manually remove the app from dozens of affected company computers.

Retaining Existing IT Staff

Your IT team has opted into a 24/7 on-call gig, and they sometimes have to put out fires at all hours, including overnight and on the weekends. But there are limits. If members of your IT team are regularly sacrificing their weekends to solve issues at your small business, they won’t stick around for long. With in-demand skills, your hard-to-source talent will simply move on to a larger organization that can capacity plan, leaving your company struggling to find replacements. This turnover cycle is commonplace and can cripple your company’s operations. An MSP can alleviate the pressure on your IT specialists and give your team a better work-life balance.

Raising Employee Morale

IT problems can cause talent loss in other areas besides IT, too. Ongoing and omnipresent IT issues grate on your workforce— even those who aren’t involved in fixing the problems. Newer members of your staff, especially Millennials or Gen Zers, are accustomed to accessing sophisticated and complex devices like smartphones, modern laptops and tablets in their personal life. While at work, if they’re using old gear that’s in constant need of repair and causing downtime or unpaid overtime, they will become frustrated. That frustration can lead to employee turnover. MSPs can help you source and upgrade to the right tech stack within your budget, cutting off “tech dissatisfaction” issues at the knees.