7 Managed Service Provider Benefits You Can Expect from Outsourcing
Managing today’s complex business service delivery infrastructure is a complicated and technology-intensive activity. It is no longer viable for most small and midsize businesses to maintain the kind of IT staffing and infrastructure required to service all of their business needs. The capabilities offered by managed service providers (MSPs) can benefit your organization by freeing your resources from the responsibility of managing your IT infrastructure so they can instead focus on your core business needs.
Managed Service Provider Benefits
In a previous post, we explored what to look for when trying to find an MSP. Here we’ll examine the top seven benefits of using an MSP from the perspective of the impact they have on your overall business.
MSP Benefit #1: Financial Considerations
MSPs are in the business of managing and providing IT infrastructure to service your needs. They can bring about huge cost efficiencies by reducing the number of IT personnel you need to staff and also the infrastructure investments you will need to make up front. The ability to spread this out as an operating expense frees you up to spend your resources on other aspects of the business. The predictable nature of the service arrangement will facilitate budgetary planning as you execute on your strategic initiatives.
MSP Benefit #2: Customer Satisfaction
Service assurance is one of the best business outcomes you get when you engage with an MSP. Their entire raison d’être is to provide the level of dependability (contractually committed to in your service-level agreements) that guarantees service availability. This results in superior uptime of your service delivery infrastructure, including rapid remediation when disruptions do occur. The net result is a higher level of service for your end-users and customers, resulting in superior CSAT.
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MSP Benefit #3: Digital Transformation
As technologies evolve and new paradigms come into existence, it becomes increasingly important to incorporate these advances in the digital transformation of your business. MSPs provide the ability to maintain your legacy infrastructure, even as they work in concert with you to develop new business service models to take advantage of these advances.
MSP Benefit #4: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
When unforeseen events do occur, MSPs are uniquely positioned to support your business through the crisis. MSPs typically have well-defined and stress-tested backup and recovery plans to ensure business continuity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the move to remote working has become an essential part of conducting business. This challenge provides yet another example of how dependent you are on the effectiveness of your IT infrastructure – and the MSPs that provide the services your end-users and customers depend upon.
MSP Benefit #5: Flexibility and Agility
MSPs have the ability to rapidly respond to your changing business needs. In addition to the strategic support they can provide in terms of digital transformation, it is equally important to appreciate the tactical support they can provide. When it comes to short-term surges in the need to provision infrastructure – for example, to support an increase in incoming call management capabilities for a spring sales event – MSPs can readily ram up the capacity needed to avoid overwhelming your existing infrastructure.
MSP Benefit #6: Compliance and Security
MSPs have the tools and processes to constantly monitor your infrastructure. This ability can provide a huge benefit in terms of corporate IT governance. They can rapidly identify machines that have vulnerabilities in terms of, for example, patches not being installed. Once these issues are addressed, they can provide reports and audits to verify compliance and improve your overall security.
MSP Benefit #7: Efficiency Using Automation and Workflows
A large part of MSP operations is dependent on the use of automations and workflows. These automations and workflows can be invaluable when it comes to streamlining your business processes to become more efficient. The net result is improved staff productivity, increased customer satisfaction and lower operational costs.
The Importance of Managed Service Providers
An MSP is not just another vendor in your business operational model, but a key partner for delivering on your day-to-day and strategic objectives. And your ideal partner will enable you to focus on – and meet – your business goals.
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