The core service offered by Avera360IT is our Managed IT Service. In this blog post we are going to look at why having a Managed IT Service is important to Small Businesses.
Access to Experts on a Budget
For the most part, small businesses can't afford to hire a full time IT professional. What normally happens is that managers or employees spend a great deal of time dealing with these issues on their own which in turn hurts the productivity of the company. By hiring a Managed Service Provider (MSP), a small company will have experts available to deal with the ever-growing amount of IT issues. Many of these services don't require a lock-in contract and allow businesses to pay them monthly or yearly. For a small business this is important because it allows them to budget IT needs based on fixed monthly payments. Budgeting for IT can be difficult because of the unpredictable nature of technology. Take, for example, the company that has one month where they only need a printer installed but the next month they need a complete network upgrade to support their new Voice Over IP (VoIP) system. What would normally be a big expense for a small business is made much more reasonable because their Managed IT Service Plan will cover a lot of the cost.
Increased Up Time, Increased Productivity
Many small businesses can't afford to have downtime. For some, every minute could mean hundreds or even thousands of dollars lost. A good IT MSP is always working behind the scenes to keep the company running through the constant monitoring of systems. The ultimate goal of the MSP to minimize downtime by monitoring, detecting, and planning for certain problems. The ultimate goal is to prevent downtime which can be done by having a data redundancy plan among other things. All of this happens behind the scenes allowing a small business to thrive while their IT Service Provider uses their expertise to ensure the IT environment is operating optimally, secured, and always up to date. Small businesses are very specialized. They are experts in their field. The more time the employees of those businesses can spend on business related tasks, the more productive the company will be. Many small business need to maximize efficiency in order to get the most out of every dollar and by allowing Managed IT Service Providers to handle the technology, this is exactly what they are doing.
Eliminating Growing Pains
The goal of every business is to grow. While growing usually means more revenue, it also means more costs. A lot of those costs will be associated with IT. Both hardware and software costs will increase. The size of the IT staff will also increase if the business does not have a MSP to help scale the IT infrastructure to meet the new needs of the company.
If a business adds more employees or doubles the size of their building they will have a lot of hardware expenses because of the need for more computers, switches, servers, cabling, and other IT equipment. A MSP can greatly reduce these costs because they are able to offer small businesses solutions that are tailored toward scalability which allows businesses to pay as they grow. In addition, the cost of additional hardware and software is reduced because many MSP's offer plans that allow businesses to add additional users as needed. When coupled with hosting options offered by MSP's, this eliminates the need for more employees and greatly lowers cost of software and hardware.
At Avera360IT, we provide end to end IT managed services to small businesses across the Greater Houston Area. Email us at ianavera@avera360it.com or call 346.212.6476 to get reliable, efficient, IT Managed Services for your Business.