As you can probably guess by the continued growth and necessity, businesses of all kinds are shelling out more money than ever for IT products and services. According to the most recent forecast by Gartner, Inc., global expenditure on IT as a whole is expected to reach $4.5 trillion in 2023, reflecting a significant 2.4% growth compared to 2022. In fact, the software segment alone is projected to experience a significant surge of 9.3% in 2023, while the IT services segment is anticipated to grow by 5.5%.
Today's business landscape is always evolving. Regardless of what you actually do day-to-day for your customers, managing and maintaining an efficient IT infrastructure can feel like a daunting and expensive task.
That said, by outsourcing your time-consuming and frustrating IT projects to a reliable managed service provider (MSP), your unique business can optimize its budgets, reduce expenses, and allocate resources more efficiently.
Today we will explore:
- What managed IT service providers are
- How MSPs can help your business
- How cost-effective hiring an MSP can really be
What are Managed IT Service Providers?
Over the last decade-plus, MSPs have emerged as a critical solution for businesses looking to optimize their IT operations and reduce costs associated with keeping up with quickly evolving challenges.
In 'The Evolving Landscape of the MSP Business Report', Barracuda surveyed 500 MSP decision makers and knowledge workers across the globe to discover MSPs are expecting an incredible average growth of 33% in 2023 alone. Specialized service providers – like us at PTG – thus offer wide-ranging management and support for organizations of all sizes including IT infrastructure, applications, and processes.
Essentially, choosing an MSP means they take on the responsibility of monitoring, maintaining, and enhancing your company's IT systems. This allows your team to focus on what they do best while majorly benefiting from the expertise and efficiency of external IT professionals.
Hiring on a third-party MSP means you can leverage the provider's extensive knowledge and experience in managing IT environments – without the need to recruit, hire, train, and re-train their own team of IT specialists to do the same work. MSPs generally offer a range of services, including network monitoring, cybersecurity, data backup and recovery, software updates, and even 24/7 help desk support.
How Can MSPs Help Your Business?
MSPs provide several key benefits to your team, regardless of your company’s size and the industry you serve. Helping your team increase productivity and profitability is always the goal.
Here are five key ways in which MSPs can best help your team:
- Proactive monitoring and maintenance:
MSPs proactively monitor your IT systems, detecting and fixing potential issues before they impact business operations with dreaded downtime. This helps increase system availability and improve employee productivity across the board. - Cybersecurity and data protection:
MSPs specialize in implementing robust cybersecurity measures to keep sensitive information away from the cyber threats and data breaches in-house IT professionals have a hard time keeping up with. This external expertise allows businesses to mitigate risks, maintain compliance, and build trust with partners. - Access to skilled IT professionals:
Tooting our own horn a little more here – MSPs provide access to a highly-educated team of IT professionals who stay updated with the latest technologies and industry best practices. This expertise spans areas such as cloud computing, virtualization, network infrastructure and so much more. - Strategic IT planning and consulting:
MSPs offer strategic IT planning and consulting services, aligning current technology initiatives with your business objectives in a big way. They aid organizations to make informed decisions about their IT infrastructure, ensuring they can adapt to evolving market demands and stay ahead of the competition. - Focus on what you do best:
Your team should be focused on what they do best instead of worrying about the ever-evolving landscape of IT topics. Partnering with an MSP means businesses can focus on their main service offerings while leaving the management and optimization of IT systems in capable hands.
In the end, MSPs can provide a huge range of benefits to your business. These benefits help your team streamline their operations, enhance platform security, leverage the latest technologies, and make informed decisions – ultimately driving overall business performance and success.
Cost-Benefit Analysis: Is Hiring an MSP Worth It?
We know MSPs aren’t free, but there are necessary costs that come with the territory of operating a business in today’s modern marketplace. Hiring anyone to run the IT leg of your business, whether they’re in-house or third-party, is a necessary cost to your business operations. And while hiring an MSP involves costs associated with bringing on a vendor, the benefits and long-term value they provide far outweigh the initial investment.
According to Glassdoor, the average singular IT professional in the US is paid around $102,423 per year, with an average salary of $83,332 alone. And that’s just ONE person doing as much as they can during a normal work week- different from a team of well-rounded and capable professionals. MSP partnerships and costs vary from business to business, but they typically range from $24,000-$48,000 per year. Compare that to the average salary of a single IT professional - that’s not just a significant difference in price, it’s MASSIVE for any sized organization. Imagine the cost of putting together a team capable of doing what an MSP can offer… Woof 🐶.
Proving their worth right off the bat, MSPs bring a wealth of specialized expertise and experience to the table, enabling all kinds of businesses to access a wide range of IT services and solutions that may otherwise be challenging to develop with in-house team members. Leveraging the knowledge and skills of complete MSPs, your company can tap into industry best practices, cutting-edge technologies, and proactive approaches to IT management for a fraction of the price of developing the same team in-house.
Similarly, MSPs that already have a team of skilled professionals with diverse skill sets thus ensures that businesses receive comprehensive support across various IT needs specific to your business. MSPs typically operate on flexible service models, allowing your business to scale its IT services based on ever-changing needs and new budgetary considerations.
Finally, and most often overlooked, MSPs have tons of established relationships with other third-party tech vendors, which allows them to negotiate better wholesale-style pricing for access to those cutting-edge tools and essential software that fit your team’s needs. This translates into direct cost savings for your business, as they can take advantage of economies of scale and avoid the expenses associated with purchasing and maintaining costly IT infrastructure independently.
Conclusion
To put it bluntly, hiring an MSP is the smartest way to reduce your IT expenses while optimizing your business's efficiency and performance. By outsourcing your IT projects to a reliable MSP, you can streamline operations, enhance cybersecurity, access skilled professionals, benefit from strategic planning, and focus on your core business activities.
MSPs offer proactive monitoring and maintenance, ensuring that potential issues are detected and resolved before they impact your business operations. Their expertise in cybersecurity and data protection helps mitigate risks, maintain compliance, and build trust with partners.
And while MSPs may be a cost your business is shying away from, hiring the same amount of knowledge and ability to run your IT services from within your organization is much, much more expensive.
In a constantly evolving business landscape, partnering with an MSP is a cost-effective solution to reduce IT expenses, optimize budgets, and allocate resources efficiently. By entrusting the management and optimization of your IT systems to the capable hands of an MSP, you can focus on what you do best and drive your business's overall performance and success.
With an MSP's specialized expertise, access to advanced technologies, and cost-saving opportunities, your team can navigate the complexities of IT management with confidence while achieving long-term benefits and plenty of savings for your business.
If you are interested in learning more about how to get the most out of your technology, give us a call at (864) 552-1291 and we'll help you evaluate capabilities and options. Also, sign up for PTG Tech Talk for monthly tech news, and consider following us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter!
