If you own a small business, there’s a good chance you don’t have an IT professional on payroll, for a valid reason: Cost. Floating the expense of even one technology professional isn’t an option for many small businesses – even well-established, successful ones.
But a lack of information technology can cost your business big time. And as related hurdles and risks, including cyber threats, keep growing, it’s going to get even worse.
Luckily, there’s a robust and reliable solution in reach that handles small companies’ tech needs, typically for much less across the fiscal year than you’d spend to bring expertise in house: Managed IT services.
Like all managed service providers (sometimes abbreviated MSP), managed IT service providers are on the rise. These vendors put critical tech security and solutions in reach of businesses via a contracted team of IT experts who service several client businesses. The economy of scale is essential to this model: By sharing resources, companies are freed from some hard costs (think software and storage, often included in managed IT fees) while at the same time saving on expertise.
In IT specifically, MSPs are growing in popularity thanks to the wellspring of benefits they bring to small businesses– all of which fall under the larger umbrella of cost savings:
● Get ahead of issues, get ahead of spending. IT hurdles can be hard to forecast, especially when there’s no expert in house assigned to keep an eye on them. Add evolving technology, ever-changing regulations, and shifting consumer expectations (which ties to the importance of online reviews) and you see how technology professionals have become as essential as a tax professionals to small businesses: Both help entrepreneurs operate efficiently, ensure compliance, and navigate complex issues before they can become expensive mistakes down the road.
● True flexibility. Top IT service providers can handle any combination of designing, building, maintaining, updating, monitoring, and servicing for software, hardware, and systems. Better yet, they operate like à la carte menus, letting you tap into those services contract-free as needed[3] (including the expertise of professionals who can help you determine which of those services you actually need!).
● No downtime = no overspending. Except for scheduled upgrades and maintenance, IT is notoriously unpredictable, marked by ebbs and flows in labor and urgency. For this reason, costly IT staffers often find themselves with time on their hands. With IT managed services, you only pay for what you use and what you need.
● Proactive protection against malware and ransomware threats. Cybersecurity is as essential to small businesses as it is to large enterprises, with 43% of cyber breaches targeting the little guys. The complexity of cybersecurity means it should not be left to amateurs – or, worse yet, to chance.
● High-performance operations mean better business outcomes. Outsourced solutions need to drive performance – which managed IT does with gusto. From hard drive health to new program installations to updates and storage needs, these services are vital to business performance in 2020 and beyond.
● 24/7 access to your system.
Imagine you hire a full-time IT staffer who holds the keys to your system. Then there’s an outage while he’s on vacation, or out of reach. Where do you turn? Managed IT service providers are always available. When you give them remote access to your system, you’re guaranteed a reliable lineup of experts who can handle an emergency remotely, for less downtime, any hour of the day.
Where to spend? Where to save? It’s a constant chorus for business owners trying to map genuine needs to budgets that are often fixed or finite.
At J2, we believe in the power of managed IT services to free up resources, drive small business growth, and protect against costly problems. Call us today at 856.288.9200 to learn more about our contract-free IT managed services for small businesses.