How Partnering with an MSP Can Save Your IT Group and Boost Revenue

MSPs have a bad rap for causing companies to cut IT jobs. But the reality is that smart companies partner with MSPs not only to save internal IT team, but also to improve their bottom-line. It seems counterintuitive, but you can boost your bottom line without letting any employees go. Here’s how:

• Quicker solution means higher net productivity.
  Most IT issues result in a dispatch of your in-house “computer guy,” and if you’re lucky, you have a couple responders. But scaling expertise and knowledge with an ever-changing tech-scape means high investment in training, onboarding new employees, or firing and hiring higher skilled support personnel. This can create a vicious cycle of issues requiring new expertise that don’t get solved quickly, or at all. The result is downtime and productivity drains until each new issue is resolved. The net cost of productivity loss and further investment in training mean a big hit to your bottom line

• Partnering with an MSP solves the root cause.
  In IT maintenance, treating the symptom and not the sickness means you’ll be plagued by the issues again and again. Many organizations find a forward-thinking strategy effective, and partner with an MSP to rectify this. Dynamic Quest, for example, first ensures that servers and users are back online and productive, then take steps to shut off the faucet of trickling cost. Better MSP providers bake root cause analysis into their process for both maintenance and break/fix issues to prevent them from recurring. Net cost of turning off that drip of cost and lost productivity can significantly boost the bottom line and the efficiency of your systems and workforce.

• Supplementing your internal team with MSP support allows you to scale and meet the needs of your enterprise.
  Even if your team is familiar with such issues as data-threatening firewall breaches, failing VPNs, or your VOIP preventing outbound calls, compounding them could leave your support personnel in a break-fix hole for hours—even days—at a time. This leaves you with little to no ability to scale and support the other issues that arise in the meantime. You’re then forced to triage based on the loss of productivity associated with each issue. With a scalable MSP (emphasis on scalable as not all MSPs are), there is broader expertise at hand, with support engineers ready to jump on your issues when they occur to get you back up and running pronto.

• MSP support allows you to focus on your business’s core value offerings.
  In the global competitive landscape—or even in just your local one—your competitive advantage will ultimately hinge on how well you leverage technology and innovation to provide better, cheaper, and faster service. Your internal tech staff know your business intimately, and could be used more strategically if they could pull themselves out of the quagmire of perpetual break-fix issues. For about the cost of one employee, you can leverage an MSP vendor to grow your capabilities, and use your internal IT staff to do more than simply maintain the productivity status quo.

• Get in front of issues before they occur.
  Not all MSPs are created equal, but better ones provide preventative maintenance that rectify problems long before they reach your server’s doorstep. According to recent research by CompTIA, the proactive monitoring that a managed service provider offers reduces your costs by 50{61194e7afa0946242429d3457858805d5d8e9f1e3c2fa6ff4cb841084e122ca3} per downtime incident. Yes, you read that correctly—half cost reduction per downtime incident. MSPs like Dynamic Quest provide multiple levels of strategic preventative measures. This includes standard monitoring and patches, specifically scripted proprietary checks and processes, and personalized strategic review and audits to ensure you run at top performance levels. These free up your staff to focus on strategic projects, and deals with preventable issues before they can occur.

• Stabilize expenses through a standard, unchanging monthly cost.
  By pairing with an MSP, you can stabilize the varying costs of resourcing maintenance and troubleshooting tasks. Unlike hourly support or contractor help, MSPs provide a flat fee. This means a predictable cost structure, with less time forecasting unforseen expenses, and less headache along the way. Plus, many MSPs include benefits like bulk purchasing and leasing options for hardware and software, and reliable compliance with government regulations. This reduces compliance and asset risk for your company.The reality is that MSPs get their best margins when your system, servers, and workstations are working at peak performance. This is in direct contrast to old parasitic models of outsourcing, especially hourly ones, in which the vendor is incentivized by having a network laden with issues because they bill higher for the extra hours spent fixing them. MSPs are breath of fresh air for IT groups and strategically-minded companies because they operate symbiotically. If your technology is riddled with problems, and the MSP works thousands of hours fixing them, your monthly bill doesn’t change one iota. So the better your network runs, the better margin there is for the MSP. This also means that the best MSPs keep an eye on the horizon to catch avoidable hazards and suggest system improvements well before they are needed, making your maintenance team a strategic partner with a common interest around your network working at its best.

All of this points to a stronger bottom line and a company operating at higher productivity. Does this mean you sacrifice headcount to make it happen? Absolutely not.  Partnering with an MSP means locking arms with a strategic partner to ensure your core IT team isn’t bogged down with day-to-day break-fix sink-holes. Instead, it retargets them to focus on the strategic growth of the company, working on technology improvements and capabilities that increase productivity rather than chasing its own tail.

There are many MSP options in the marketplace. If need some help choosing one to fit your company, check out our whitepaper, Nine Key Criteria for Selecting a Managed Services Provider. Too, feel free to contact us if you need advice on how to sell the idea of working with an MSP to your company executives, or if you have general MSP inquiries. We especially welcome those who are interested in Dynamic Quest’s own MSP services with QuestCare MSP, QuestCare Remote and QuestCare PPM. Till next time, keep working smart.