A Good Definition of IT Managed Services
According to Wikipedia the meaning of Managed Services is “… the practice of outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining, and anticipating need for, a range of processes and functions, ostensibly for the purpose of improved operations and reduced budgetary expenditures through the reduction of directly-employed staff.
We bolded the type on “ostensibly” because the brash honesty made us chuckle. Yes, an IT Managed Services Provider is supposed to deliver such benefits to businesses, but it doesn’t always play out that way. We wonder what business owner got frustrated enough to add that to the Wikipedia definition.
In simpler terms, here’s what IT Managed Services Providers generally do, and why finding the right MSP can be a great business move.
- Monitor your IT network for issues
- Keep your servers, computers, and related systems updated
- Provide a help desk to resolve issues
- Provide technical guidance
- Keep tech costs manageable
Those are the basics, and the advantages of shifting those responsibilities to an IT Managed Services Provider are:
- Issues addressed without taking staff off task
- No forgetting updates
- There’s always someone to turn to when something goes wrong
- Better technical expertise
- A support team with 100% availability, rather than one person who takes lunch and vacations
- Potentially reduced costs
Clearly, shifting the responsibility of all things IT to experts who handle this responsibility all day every day is better than using staff resources. Once you crunch the numbers and realize it makes sense, it’s important to find the right MSP for your size business and budget.
All IT companies are not the same. They may all have very similar expertise and services, but how they deliver it and at what cost is where the “ostensibly” comes in. Most of our clients come to us because they were not getting the level of service they expected, there’s no sense of urgency to fix things, fixes need fixing again and again, and a general sense that their provider just doesn’t care.
We built mPowered IT with the founding principle that every customer should enjoy an outstanding experience with every contact. We call it the Extra Scoop experience. “Ostensibly” could forever be removed from the definition of Managed Services if our own customers were to write it.
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