Often, potential clients come to us seeking Managed IT services when their business experiences a notable IT event, or when some significant step in the life of the business is anticipated (resulting in a significant IT project). It’s at these moments, in particular, when business owners realize their present IT plan is insufficient for their needs.
When growing small businesses come to us, we often find that someone within the organization has been serving as impromptu IT. Usually it is an employee, friend, or family member with some tech savvy, but whose primary duties lie elsewhere. By the time we are contacted about our services, that impromptu IT person is often overwhelmed by doing multiple jobs (their own plus IT), or simply overwhelmed by the technical skills required for the maturity level of the business.
This kind of arrangement (when the IT tasks are beyond the scope and skill of impromptu IT) leads to interpersonal frustrations and IT inefficiencies. Other employees might get frustrated at the time required to fix a problem, or you the business owner might be peeved at a laptop that is non-functional for several hours too long. Occasionally the impromptu IT arrangement can lead to IT “events” which require expert cleanup, and which cost you time, money, and energy. In addition, burdening this person with increasingly complex tasks on an increasingly complicated network (which inevitably happens as your business grows) risks building inefficiencies into the network which may not be noticeable until an expert comes in and has to clean them up.
That’s not me, you say. I have IT. But what if your IT guy is distracted by (and maybe completely swamped) with Help Desk tickets? Often this person is running this way and that making sure that other employees can do their job (fixing printer errors, solving password problems, handling software disruptions). As diligent and skilled as this person is, other portions of the organization’s IT suffer. Resolving tickets takes precedence over fairly routine but vital tasks like daily backups and server checks.
Resolving Help Desk tickets, as necessary as that is, may also get in the way of broader projects like IT infrastructure planning and implementation of effective organization-wide cyber hygiene. You may find that when you go to physically expand a facility, for example, that your overworked IT guy hasn’t had the time or mental bandwidth to spec out the project as effectively as he needed to. Worse, you may find after a cyber incident that some cyber hygiene practice has slipped — not because your guy is incompetent, but because you are asking him to do too much.
Whether you are a growing business with impromptu IT or a business with dedicated IT staff, having a Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) frees up your employees to focus on their jobs. Your impromptu IT guy can go back to his regular job duties. Your regular IT guy can handle all those Help Desk tickets to help keep his colleagues working. Beyond this, an MSP like BIT Services may help you discover other resource considerations that may save you money in the end – you may have equipment you don’t need, or your network may be inefficiently configured and slower than it could be. Maybe an upgrade of a piece of hardware reduces the IT hiccups and consequent downtime you’ve been experiencing too regularly. Likely, a good MSP will also be able to offer some cybersecurity recommendations that will reduce your risk in this area.
In any case, don’t wait until you’ve experienced that dreaded, resource-sucking IT incident. Don’t wait to find out that your business growth has to be delayed because of IT planning deficiencies. As you have done with the rest of your business details – with your products and services, administration, marketing, and ALL THE OTHER THINGS – go ahead and take the IT bull by the horns. Your business will be better off for it.