Is Your “Just Okay” Technology a Ticking Time Bomb?

Technology should never be “just okay” — it’s a key factor in the success of your business. Why focus on the status quo when you could be supercharging growth?  

If you had an opportunity to make your organization 25-50% more efficient, would you take it or simply say “Nah, no need. We’re okay for now”?

While you may be handling day-to-day IT operations at an acceptable level, what is the opportunity cost to your organization (and the negative impact on your staff)? If key team members regularly get calls at their child’s T-ball game or in the middle of the night letting them know they need to log in and reboot a server, does that truly offer them the work-life balance enjoyed by others in the organization? In this age of always-on business with a heavy reliance on data and security procedures, it may be time to review whether maintaining critical structures still makes sense. As a result, greater numbers of organizations are reaching out to third-party managed IT providers for support.

Better, Faster, Cheaper

The holy trinity of technology — services that are better, faster and cheaper — may seem unattainable, but when you work with a managed services provider, it is possible that you could find long-term solutions for your small- to mid-size business. The excess cost, scale limitations and insufficient resiliency that are a regular result of pushing an internal technology staff and platforms to their breaking point are a ticking time bomb that can cause serious problems for organizations. If this is true, why do so many business and IT leaders maintain that internal support is sufficient? The overall costs of failure are significant and can include everything from a serious data breach to budget overruns, lagging performance and vendors who run your company.

Benefits of Managed IT Services

As with other types of outsourcing, there are some specific reasons that companies move towards an IT managed services model:

• Bolstering institutional knowledge: Small IT departments require team members to wear a variety of hats, and it’s difficult to have specialists in every facet of the advanced telecommunications, data and technology structures needed to support today’s complex business processes. Working with an IT managed services provider such as Tech Support of Minnesota provides your team with ready access to SMEs on a variety of topics.
• Adding unique value:  The main advantages of outsourcing a particular or repetitive task is the amount of new time freed up. The new time can add tremendous value to your business. What incredible new functionality can your internal technology experts come up with when they are provided with the time to dream big? This is perhaps the largest (and most difficult to quantify) value that you’ll gain from outsourcing standardized IT tasks.
• Balanced budget structures: Having experts on staff can be expensive, and a big hit to your operational budgets. A managed services provider allows you to structure your budget to avoid significant upfront costs and mitigate unexpected expenses through a support structure that ensures against damaging incidents or sudden business growth.
• Flexible and scalable: Business can be cyclical, and it’s important to ensure that your business can quickly scale up (or down) based on the needs of the organization. Have a sudden run on a product or service on your website? No problem, a flexible structure will support additional website activity without freezing — something that could easily happen if you have to wait for an internal tech team to spin up a new server to balance the load.
• Offloading risk: There is a certain amount of risk within all organizations, but working with a technology partner allows you to offset some of that risk. This is especially important for companies with exceptional needs around customer data and compliance requirements. These security risks can be much more challenging for small- to mid-size organizations who may not have time to research and implement best practices entirely.
• Security and compliance: Regular audits of your hardware, software, and security needs are critical to successful business in today’s digital world. Patches can no longer be applied quarterly or on a schedule; instead, it’s often essential to implement them as soon as they’re available to mitigate the risk of a cyber security incident. Should an incursion occur, do you have secure data backups and a solid plan for restoring business operations as quickly as possible? Data backups and restoration takes precedence in a managed services model, but there are any number of compliance and security challenges that can be effectively addressed when you have quick access to experts in a variety of disciplines.
• Technology access: Wouldn’t it be great to have access to the latest and greatest versions of software, as soon as they hit the market and are stable instead of dealing with decades-old versions that you can’t justify buying upgrades for? Cloud-based services provide you with an affordable upgrade path for important technology — assuring that your teams stay nimble and well-supported throughout a technology product’s lifecycle.

The benefits of working with a managed services provider are myriad, but perhaps the most important is avoiding the ticking time bomb of an overtaxed IT team and workers who don’t have access to the latest and greatest technology.

Ready to learn more about how Tech Support of Minnesota can benefit your Twin Cities South Metro area organization specifically? Contact us today at (952) 758--7272 or via email to [email protected]. Our professional consultants will work closely with you to ensure that we exceed your business goals while staying within defined budgets.