How an MSP can help your SMB drive innovation & save money
Published on: March 25th, 2021
Last edited: May 24th, 2023
How can a Managed IT Service Provider (MSP) help your business?
What is a Managed IT Service Provider?
The top 6 most common problems solved by Managed IT Service Provider
1. Improving businesses cyber security posture
Cyber Security should be a high-priority issue for any business today due to the sheer increase in the number and severity of recent cyber attacks. In fact 1 in 3 Australian businesses are affected by cyber crime and only 14% are ready to defend themselves. The average cost to an Australian business per breach is $276, 323 in 2021. No business is safe and the impact can be devastating.
Business leaders need to source cost-effective ways to protect themselves and improve their cyber security posture to avoid downtime, defend against an attack and comply with regulatory requirements.
Working and an IT Service provider gives you the following and more:
- Access to more sophisticated cyber security protection
- Around the clock monitoring services (SOC)
- Proactive and obsessive back up services
- End User protection (EDR)
- Proactive monitoring and response for data centres (SIEM)
“64% of Australian SMBs have reported having been attacked by Ransomware.”
2. Inconsistent or non-existent backup and disaster recovery
Your business data is your most valuable asset. The results of losing access to your data are devastating. According to the experts, approximately 25% of businesses will not reopen after a significant disaster. The results get worse for companies that experience a disaster but don’t have a recovery plan. 43% of these don’t survive.
Whether your business is faced with a hardware failure or has fallen victim to a cyber-attack or virus, having an effective disaster recovery plan is paramount.
Working with an MSP, you will have the expertise at your fingertips you need to:
- Identify all of the possible threats your business faces
- Assist with IT project delivery to mitigate risks that should be fixed
- Develop an emergency communication plan and recovery team
- Finalise a business continuity plan so you can get back up and running fast
Once your disaster recovery plan is implemented, your MSP will proactively back up your data and help you stay in business if a disaster does strike by restoring your systems and data fast.
3. Avoid Downtime
Modern businesses live and die by their applications and if a data centre goes down, the applications go with it and by extension the business. Equipment failures are common, networks go down and hard drives crash every 15 seconds. Besides that, SMBs don’t have the resources to put in redundant systems, manage regular backups and patches to ensure they can get back up and running quickly. Consequently, business viability is a function of IT to protect the business.
“Downtime costs SMBs more than $2000 per hour.”
Working with an MSP, your systems will be proactively backed up and monitored around the clock to ensure your business systems are operating at peak efficiency. An MSP will offer redundancy systems to keep your business operating even if a technical failure occurs.
4. No time for IT strategy work
Driving technical innovation is critical to achieving business innovation. Technology is integral to a companies ability to achieve growth, efficiencies and productivity. Therefore it is critical that IT teams focus on driving innovation. Unfortunately for many SMBs, the day to day requirements that keep business systems running and end-users working effectively take up 90% of the time.
A great MSP will manage all of your IT support requirements and ensure your IT systems and end-users are operating effectively. They will also provide you with IT Strategic advice and can even develop a comprehensive IT strategy or Best Practice Review to help with your digital transformation.
5. Unable to identify root causes of issues
It is not always possible for small IT departments to take care of routine regular maintenance, patches, support end-users and also have time to analyse systems and the cause of common reoccurring issues. The result is small issues become larger or more common issues which inturn frustrates end users and wastes time for internal IT staff.
An MSP has the systems, resources and knowledge required to identify, resolve and monitor symptoms to find the root cause and fix it once and for all.
6. Burgeoning IT Costs and limited budgets
Finding good IT resources is time-consuming and can be cost-prohibitive. Every SMB is conscious of costs and a great SMB will be monitoring them constantly looking for places to reduce them where it makes sense.
An MSP works on a monthly fixed cost where there are no surprises. They provide highly skilled and educated IT resources for a fraction of the cost. Consequently providing exceptional benefits by achieving economies of scale in terms of acquiring software, hardware and access to the right solutions your teams may not be aware of. Additionally, fees can be accounted for as operating expenses vs capital expenditures.
In conclusion..
These are only some of the problems that a managed IT service provider can help you with. If you would like to explore the specifics of how an MSP could contribute to future-proofing your business, Contact Us today for more information.
