The Managed Service Provider definition speaks of the outsourcing of IT services and admin to an external company. Although it is not solely used for IT management we are describing its function from an IT perspective.

The constant evolution of technology means that internal teams often struggle to keep up with new innovations, workflows and techniques. As a result, IT support teams become reactive rather than taking a more proactive approach to IT provision.

If you have ever thought the idea of managed IT services was overkill for your organisation or had cost concerns now is the time to reconsider.
Here are eight reasons why outsourcing your IT support could work for you.

1. Operational Focus
   As your business grows it can become increasingly difficult for your internal teams to support the new workloads and the demands of new technology.  One of the benefits of a managed service model is that it frees up your key staff to concentrate on operational needs whilst taking care of knowledge gaps, resource gaps and new developments.
2. Efficient cost management
   A major benefit of managed service is that it lowers the costs of labour and nullifies the cost of hiring and training new IT staff. The ability to have trained staff on tap in a dynamically scalable way is very compelling. The ability to manage your IT service on a fixed cost basis as an operational expense instead of a capital expense can also prove financially sound.
3. Expertise you need
   Technology never stands still, new technology brings new challenges. Compatibility issues, upgrades, legacy systems integration may be problems that your existing IT team might not have the knowledge or experience to resolve. Then there is the issue of management and resource availability. Irrespective of whether you systems are cloud based or on premise a significant number of people are required to support your business systems. Yes this situation can be resolved by recruitment and training but this can prove to be financially prohibitive. Then there is the risk that you invest in training your staff to find that they leave for other opportunities in their new specialism.
   One of the key advantages of managed IT services is that you can hire an entire team of IT professionals for a fixed cost and at short notice anything from System Architects to Developers Consultants or Helpdesk analysts.
4. Scale up or Stand down as needed
   A Managed Service Provider can respond to changes in demand in real time, therefore system downtime should not be a concern. Able to respond to seasonal resource fluctuations, demands for new developments and can form part of a strategic plan for organisational change. This flexibility allows the option to stand up or stand down services and personnel in a tactical way to help achieve longer term goals, or shorter term just to prove a concept.
5. Receive timely support
   With 24/7 support, on-call options and weekend support it is easy to find a support package that suits your needs. If you just need core hours support or want 24/7 365 there is a package to suit.
6. Avoiding downtime
   The trick to avoiding expensive downtime is to have some proactive measures in place to detect trends, highlight issues and preempt problems before they occur. Remote monitoring and management can identify, diagnose and troubleshoot potential problems before they become an issue and alert appropriate teams so they can take action to remediate. The cost of an outage far outweighs the cost of monitoring provided by an MSP and is considered as a necessary risk mitigation in business continuity planning.
7. Gain support for Security and Compliance
   Corporate data is the lifeblood of your business, the importance maintaining its integrity and security is paramount. Managed IT Services can work with your legal team and compliance officers to ensure that systems are set up to adhere to the various levels of governance and regulations.
8. Dedicated point of contact
   When you sign up under a Managed IT Services agreement you will get a dedicated team to look after your interests, learn about your business and represent you from a technical standpoint when dealing with other vendors and 3rd party companies. They become your point of escalation and your most valued advisor.

Discover the benefits of Managed IT Services with STG

Why choose STG as your Managed IT Services Provider?

• Established in 2010 we have long standing partnerships with major vendors like Microsoft, Intel, Fujitsu and other Tier 1 suppliers
• We have been providing support services to enterprise and local government customers since our formation.
• Our team understand the mechanics of providing a good quality service whilst keeping cost down.
• Occasionally when companies need to achieve maximum ROI, the practice of ‘sweating assets’ becomes a sensible pursuit. We work hard to extract maximum performance from your IT assets whilst managing reliability risks.
• Big enough to cope with your IT service requirements but small enough to be flexible to your exacting needs. We can cater for projects, proofs of concepts, trials or full support and if you need a design team or developers we can provide that too.

Here at STG, we are dedicated to helping your business flourish. By helping you concentrate on what you do best and not worrying about the IT aspects. Are you ready for an incredible digital transformation? Let’s get going.