The short answer is because it’s cheaper than the other options. Longer answer because it’s cheaper and their IT systems are taken care of by a team of professionals who do this day in and day out. Still not convinced? Let’s take an example. Company ‘A’ has 1 Small Business Server running File & Print and Exchange, 24 machines (some desktops, some laptops), 3 printers, and some Blackberries.

What does company ‘A’ need to provide world-class IT management for its systems and people?

Single point of contact for all IT issues (help desk), 24/7 monitoring and alerts, vendor management, on-site hardware support, system administration (password resets, creation of user accounts, etc.), change management, reporting and root cause analysis, investigation of new technologies that are relevant to what company ‘A’ does, service level agreements, software/application support, backup, printer management, network management, server management, desktop support, remote access, regular incident analysis, discounted hardware and software ? The list goes on and on.

So what can company ‘A’ do?

Get an existing employee who is good with computers to help with any problems?

This will not provide you with many of the above requirements. The person in question may be great at repairing computers at home, but do they have any business IT experience? Imagine that you spend all day trying to solve a printing problem. They may or may not fix it. Any time they have spent doing work they are not trained to do, they should have spent doing work they are trained and paid to do. Effectively, you would be paying a non-IT professional to do the work of a professional. So what’s new?

Employee, an IT professional, or even a team?

Hire all the people you need to provide the service you require. How many people are those? Research shows that one IT employee is needed for every 40 employees. Therefore, you will need to hire a person to support company ‘A’. This person will be busy trying to cover desk support, help desk, network support, R&D, root cause analysis, etc. You may think you can handle it, after all, you only have 24 users to take care of! Maybe you can, but not when you’re sick, on vacation, or need to be watching two incidents at the same time. You should also be well trained in desktop, server and network support, not forgetting customer-facing skills. Since you don’t have any backup, you need to be a senior technician, capable of working on your own. An approximate salary of £40-£50k, as well as benefits, training and holiday cover. Maybe there is an alternative?

Use an IT company. When you have a problem, pay them by the hour to come and fix it.

The IT company will only charge when you have problems. Does this encourage them to fix the root cause? Are they preventing problems before they happen? NO! You may be letting your IT systems degrade, and when you find it affects your business, you’ll have to pay for a quick fix. Don’t forget that you’re not just paying the engineer. You’re losing money because your employees can’t function at full capacity when your systems aren’t working. In fact, you could be paying double when you have a problem.

And for all this money you get breakdown/repair assistance. What about all the things we mentioned? You really need to have proper IT management. Are you also going to pay hourly for all of them? It’s hard to put a price on what this is going to cost over a year, and that makes budgeting time quite difficult.

The solution: use an IT managed services company.

The first thing to mention is the cost. Simply multiplying the number of servers, desktops, and laptops you need with a fixed monthly cost establishes your IT support budget for the year.

For company ‘A’ this cost would be around £10,000 per year. It’s much less than hiring your own staff. It’s also likely to be a lot less than using pay-as-you-go IT support. So what do you get for the money? You have everything mentioned at the beginning of this article:

Single point of contact for all IT issues (help desk), 24/7 monitoring and alerts, vendor management, on-site hardware support, system administration (password resets, creation of user accounts, etc.), change management, reporting and root cause analysis, investigation of new technologies that are relevant to what company ‘A’ does, service level agreements, software/application support, backups, printer management, network management, server management, desktop support, remote access, regular incident analysis and upgrade meetings, discounted hardware and software. So how come managed IT services give you so much more than the other options and still cost less?

IT managed services companies are structured to become the IT department of multiple companies. With the right tools, processes, experience, and software, IT support costs are reduced due to increased levels of efficiency.

IT managed services companies work to fix problems as soon as they arise. In many cases even before the client has realized it. 24/7 alerts mean that as soon as a problem arises, the managed services company is aware and the problem can be resolved before it affects your business. It also means that the problem is solved faster, since the engineer has direct access to your systems 24 hours a day. They don’t even need to go inside. They simply connect to the problematic device, resolve the issue, and move on to the next incident.

Using an IT managed service provider also means your IT needs are taken care of quickly, as they tend to only use engineers with extensive real-world experience. Managed services IT companies are able to employ the best, knowing that it is these people’s skills that help protect their customers’ IT systems. Managed services IT companies want these IT systems to work all the time; otherwise, they won’t meet the strict SLAs (service level agreements) they set. If an issue is ignored and escalated, it means they have to travel to your site to resolve it. That costs them money, so it makes sense for IT managed services companies to make sure their systems work.

In most cases, they will help you with the strategy. This is done by monitoring and analyzing the information they obtain from the alert systems and the incidents raised by users. Using this information, IT managed services companies work with their clients to reduce the number of reported incidents. This saves your company and theirs time and money.

Of course, having an IT managed services company on your side doesn’t mean everything is included. If you have development work or other new requirements, additional charges may apply, although your support budget should be fixed.