Does Your SME Need IT Managed Services?
As owners of resource-tight small-medium enterprises (SMEs) or businesses (SMBs), running your company on lean operations is almost always a given. With many aspects of your business requiring capital to function well and drive growth, investing limited funds in supportive functions like IT will typically be pushed to the bottom of your list of priorities. However, as digital platforms and tools play an increasingly vital role in the market and business landscape, it may be time to consider engaging IT managed services not just for when issues arise, but also before they occur.
What is IT Managed Services?
IT managed services are information technology functions outsourced to a third-party service provider. The provider takes responsibility for monitoring, maintaining, and supporting your business’s technology systems to ensure that everything runs smoothly, and your data is always safeguarded.
Benefits of IT Managed Services for SMEs
For SMBs and SMEs with an IT department, you may wonder if it is necessary to engage the services of an external vendor when you already have an internal team to handle this function. While it is true that your IT staff can be tasked with managing your company’s IT systems, working with an IT managed services provider is advantageous for your firm in several other ways.
1. Access Specialised Expertise While Ensuring Cost-effectiveness
It is no secret that technology has constantly been growing exponentially. Based on figures quoted on Zippia, computational speed and power have been doubling every one and a half to two years since the 1960s and 70s. This creates new challenges with each advancement, spawning a need for companies to invest in upskilling their IT staff or to recruit new talent to ensure that they have the ability to navigate the ever-changing IT scene effectively.
Such investments and recruitments may not be feasible for resource-scarce SMEs due to the associated costs and opportunity cost on productivity while team members are away for training. However, by engaging an IT managed services provider, SMEs can always be supported by an IT team equipped with the latest skills, knowledge, and experience. Not only do such services meet the company’s needs quickly and efficiently, but they also cost comparatively less than the amount required to train employees, hire new talent, and pay for bigger premises for an expanding team. Thus, IT managed services offer SMBs a more cost-effective solution for their IT needs.
2. IT Managed Services is Scalable
Investing in IT infrastructure, while essential, can be a costly affair that can easily become unmanageable as your SME grows and requires your IT systems to be scaled up accordingly. Compounding the issue is the speed at which technology evolves, which increases the frequency at which IT infrastructure needs to be upgraded to keep pace with the market.
However, with outsourced IT managed services, these expenses can be consolidated into a fixed monthly fee that covers your diverse IT needs, including hardware maintenance and repair. Under this model, costs can be anticipated easily, eliminating unpleasant surprise expenses when unexpected system breakdown occurs in your firm. In this way, managed service providers increase the ease for SMBs to budget for their needs and afford companies the flexibility to scale quickly to support their evolving needs at an affordable price.
3. IT Managed Services Minimises Downtime
In the unfortunate event that an IT issue arises in your SME, having the support of an IT managed services provider allows you to tap into their experience and skills to resolve your problems quickly, minimising any downtime. Based on the Uptime Institute’s 2022 Outage Analysis Report, more than 60% of system outages were found to cost companies over US$100,000. As such, minimising downtime helps your SMB to avoid incurring significant losses that can deal a solid blow to your operations.
At the same time, as experts who are always abreast of the latest IT developments, you can be confident that any IT solutions and technology implemented in your SME will be based on the latest industry best practices. Thus, working with an IT managed services provider also enables your business to benefit from optimised systems that reduce downtime and maximise work efficiency.
4. IT Managed Services Help SMEs to Adopt a Preventive Approach
According to the Security Magazine, SMEs and SMBs are popular targets for cyberattacks and account for 43% of the total cases. By working with an IT managed service provider whose team is proficient in the latest industry know-how, you are well-positioned to foresee potential IT issues. This enables you to establish the necessary security infrastructure to prevent problems proactively before they arise, allowing your company to benefit from improved security.
Support Your SME with Reliable IT Managed Services
With the increasing sophistication of cybercriminals and intensifying market competition, ensuring IT security and reliability have become more important than ever to give SMEs the edge they need to stay ahead. As a leading IT managed services provider, EZSVS can offer your SME the expert support and technical assistance required to meet your unique needs and manage your IT operations seamlessly at competitive prices.
We understand how important it is to keep things running smoothly so you can stay competitive. That is why we work tirelessly to ensure that all IT incidents are communicated and addressed expeditiously. By minimising disruptions, we enable your SME to focus on what matters most—your core business. With a singular focus on ensuring your success and growth, our services are designed with scalability in mind so that you can easily handle any future changes or additions. With EZSVS, you can trust our experienced professionals to help you manage and keep your critical technologies up-to-date so that your IT systems will run efficiently, no matter what challenges may arise down the road. Reach out to us today to get reliable IT managed services that take your SME to the next level.
IT Support and IT Managed Services for SMEs
Before digital technologies became an integral part of corporate life, battling IT woes with over-the-phone IT support was a natural thing to do. However, as business operations become increasingly reliant on IT systems, the market’s changing IT needs are evolving. Consequently, managed services have emerged as an alternative approach to address IT concerns. As an owner of a small-medium enterprise (SME) without the luxury of engaging both services, you may wonder how managed services differ from traditional IT support and which is a better choice. To clarify your doubts, this article breaks down the two forms of services.
What is IT Support and IT Managed Services
When determining whether traditional IT support or managed services are more suitable for your SME, it is crucial to understand what each service entails. By engaging traditional IT support, your business will gain access to a team of IT experts who provide assistance when an IT problem occurs. On the other hand, managed services involve monitoring your company’s IT systems continuously and scheduling regular upgrades and maintenance to avoid technical issues.
Differences Between IT Support and IT Managed Services
IT support and managed services are both solutions to IT problems, but there are significant differences between them.
1. In-House vs Third-Party
Traditional IT support is typically provided by an in-house team. As in-house employees have a deeper understanding of your SME, they can design solutions that fit well in your organisation. Meanwhile, managed services are offered by a third-party service provider, who deploys a proactive monitoring system on your company’s premises. As these service providers are constantly exposed to diverse IT issues across different industries, they can better resolve complex challenges that an in-house team is less equipped to handle. By working with these service providers, you can be assured that any solution implemented is always up-to-date and in line with the latest IT best practices.
2. Preventive vs Reactive
Another major difference between IT support and managed services is their service model. For traditional IT support, a reactive approach is adopted where the support team only steps in to handle a concern when an alert is raised. In contrast, managed services providers proactively monitor your IT systems to pre-empt potential issues. Steps are also taken to avoid these problems, minimising disruptions to your operations. With downtime amounting to more than US$300,000/hour for 91% of the companies that responded to ITIC’s 2022 Global Server Hardware Security survey, managed services can help your SME avoid hefty costs.
3. Pricing Model
Besides the differences in how IT support and managed services manage technical issues, they also operate on distinct fee models:
- In-house IT support: Overhead costs are incurred under this model. With the annual salary of an in-house IT support specialist averaging S$45,600, this may not always be ideal for SMEs, which often run on a tighter budget.
- Outsourced IT support: Outsourcing IT support enables your SME to quickly increase or reduce your required assistance based on your needs and be charged accordingly. Fees for this approach are billed on a per-device, per-user, ad hoc or monitoring-only basis. Under a per-device and per-user plan, the costs can add up when your team expands. Meanwhile, services under the monitoring-only plan may be insufficient to meet your IT needs. In the case of an ad hoc plan, it can be a good option if you rarely require IT services. However, it may become costly when a serious technical issue occurs.
- Managed services: Managed services typically charge a transparent, fixed monthly rate, enabling your business to predict your IT expenditures better.
Future-Proof Your IT Infrastructure with EZSVS’s Managed Services
In today’s business environment, efficiency and productivity are essential for success. To stay ahead of the competition, your SME will need an IT infrastructure that you can always rely on to help you keep pace with the ever-changing marketplace. This is where EZSVS comes in. As a leading IT service provider, we offer IT managed services and a diverse range of IT solutions, such as cloud and hardware maintenance services, to meet your varied needs. With a global presence in more than 60 countries, our rich expertise and experience enables us to quickly identify and manage your IT pain points with effective solutions. With EZSVS to take care of the technical details, you can focus on running your business, knowing that your IT infrastructure is in good hands. Reach out to us today to learn how you can leverage our managed services to prepare your organisation for the future.