7 Amazing Benefits of Using a Dallas Managed Services IT Firm
Your company has experienced tremendous growth this past year, and while you couldn’t be prouder, certain tasks are also starting to fall by the wayside. For example, your IT infrastructure is not being maintained as it should. You’re thinking of entrusting your IT work to managed services, but how will this help?
Here are 7 great benefits of using a Dallas managed services IT firm:
- Stay up-to-date on new software and tech
- Ensure data privacy compliance
- Contract-based pricing keeps costs predictable
- More time to dedicate to other business tasks
- Services can scale with your company
- Working with experts guarantees quality service
- IT reliability when your company needs it most
If that above list doesn’t make it clear enough why managed IT services are within your company’s best interest, then we recommend you keep reading. This article will underscore the importance of having a team of pros in your company’s corner.
Thinking of Hiring a Dallas Managed Services IT Firm? Your Company Can Reap These 7 Awesome Benefits
Stay Up-to-Date on New Software and Tech
If you’re in any form of competitive industry–which we’re certain you are–then staying on the cutting edge is crucial. You want to support your company with software, hardware, and tech that will drive innovation forward. Yet what will that tech be? For you and your staff, it isn’t always so easy to say.
What you tend to do is take a gamble based on the first rumblings of new software or hardware. You don’t want to wait until everyone and their grandmother has used the hardware/software, because then jumping on board would not be very innovative. Instead, you want to be among the first so your competitors will be forced to follow in your footsteps.
Yet what if your gamble doesn’t pay off? Without any precedent set beforehand, the chances of the software or hardware being a flop are about as high as the tech succeeding. If the tech fails, then so too does your company for betting on the wrong horse, to so speak. If your competitors bet on the winning horse, then they get to bask in the glory and you’re the one following their lead.
With a managed services IT firm at the helm, these guessing and gambling games could come to an end. Your managed service providers, or MSPs, would always be on the cutting edge so they could recommend hardware, software, and other tech to you before it becomes public knowledge. Unlike your gambles with tech, your MSPs would only suggest hardware or software with a reputation for success.
You’d be the one setting the industry standard going forward, and not just once, but time after time.
Ensure Data Privacy Compliance
In 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, went into effect throughout the European Union. Not only did it impact members of the EU, but countries in other parts of the world that do business within the EU or have customers that live there.
That was just the beginning. In 2020, Canada passed the Digital Charter Implementation Act. That same year, China introduced its Personal Data Protection Law or PDPL, and South Africa unveiled its Protection of Personal Information Act or POPIA.
There’s also the Personal Data Protection Bill or PDPB in India, the Thailand Personal Data Protection Act or PDPA, the Personal Information Protection Act in South Korea, the Act on Protection of Personal Information in Japan, and the California Consumer Privacy Act or CCPA in the United States.
Some of these laws have existed for decades and have since been updated while others have only been introduced in the past couple of years. What the existence of these worldwide laws tells us is that more than ever, people care about what companies do with their data online and off. From basic information like a home address and telephone number to more personal data like a social security number or credit card number, your company must protect this data and comply with the laws that govern your part of the world.
A Dallas managed services IT firm can help you sort through the legalese so you can make sense of these data privacy laws. The MSP will also help your company shape up so you’re always in compliance. You’ll maintain your audience base, continue to grow customers, and stay out of the news for having made a compliancy misstep, which often comes with quite a hefty fine.
Contract-Based Pricing Keeps Costs Predictable
Does your company have an IT department? Maybe you’ve worked with a few IT pros on a freelance basis, but not at current. With your company growing, since money likely isn’t the issue any longer, you cannot continue forward with this glaring gap in your approach. It’d be like wearing armor but having a huge hole in the abdomen. It’s an obvious vulnerability that nefarious characters will exploit and focus on.
MSPs often work on a contractual basis. Whether you pen a contract with the MSP for six months, a year, or even several years, the price of IT services will be laid out clearly in front of you.
We’ve written about this before, but MSP pricing models vary. Some MSPs may charge you for any monitoring work they do. Others charge by how many users they work for within your company as a monthly flat fee. Others use a flat fee but in a different way, in that you get varying levels of onsite and remote support but at one rate. This is called all-you-can-eat pricing.
MSPs may also bill you based on how many devices they monitor or how many of their services you decide to use, which is the tiered pricing model. Whatever model your MSP follows, you’ll know what’s coming ahead of time. With the all-you-can-eat pricing model especially, you can expect consistent rates month after month and even year after year. There are no sudden spikes that cause your company to have to tighten its purse strings in other areas.
No matter what stage a company is at, from those nerve-wracking startup days to the established period and even rising to the level of a Fortune 500 company, having access to services where the bill is predictable is worth its weight in gold. You can budget more effectively, divert spending elsewhere if necessary, and track revenue with greater accuracy.
More Time to Dedicate to Other Business Tasks
Remember how earlier we mentioned that guessing which hardware and software would be the next big boom was the only way to get a leg up on the competition without an MSP? Besides the huge money-wasting gamble that can be, think of how much time you spend getting your company onboarded with software or hardware that turns out to not be what you expected. It’s a lot, even too much.
That’s one way of many that managed IT services can add more time back to your schedule as well as the schedules of your staff. Rather than be the ones to brainstorm innovative tech ideas, your MSPs could take care of it. Instead of stressing about the security of your current hardware and software solutions, you’d know you’re in good hands.
A smooth-working system is one in which all employees can use the hardware and software they need day after day to do their jobs without lags, crashes, bugs, and other slowdowns. Imagine how much more productive your office could be with a Dallas MSP on your side. If time is money, then the more work your employees do, the more well-padded your company’s bottom line will be.
Services Can Scale with Your Company
Let’s touch back on MSP pricing for a moment, shall we? Since we’re sure you’ve tried quite a many hardware and software solutions in your day, you know how lots of tech is priced. Maybe you get a free trial or demo for a month. Very few software options offer free plans, but for the ones that do, you have a paltry few features.
This isn’t an accident. By depriving you of the features your company needs to excel, you’re forced to pay for a plan. You’ll start with the basic plan, but then as your customers grow, you need a more expensive plan. Then you’re up to the next tier and the tier after that until you’re paying for the most expensive plan.
The huge price spike can make you reconsider the software solution. Not so with a managed services IT firm. You’ll be in contact with your MSP frequently to discuss your business needs. Your MSP expects that those business needs will not be the same forever, and in anticipating that, they can discuss scaling up services.
Sometimes when buying software, you can get a lot of services you don’t need just for the few you do. Your managed services team will not work in that way. You’re only scaling up for the services you need, nothing more.
In some cases, businesses have to scale down to prolong survival. You’ll be pinching pennies more tightly in a scenario like this, which your MSP will understand. If you need to scale down, they can do that as well.
Working with Experts Guarantees Quality Service
We live in an age of instant information where there’s a how-to article or YouTube tutorial for just about any problem under the sun. Yet just because you’ve fixed a minor pipe leak in your bathroom doesn’t make you a plumber. If you had a serious plumbing problem, you’d want to call in the pros.
It should be no different for your company’s IT problems. Although you can look up any unique computer issue and find a forum poster who went through the same thing, that doesn’t always mean you can fix the problem yourself. For more complex issues, you shouldn’t attempt the repairs, as you could make the problem worse.
When you trust in expert Dallas MSPs, quality is the last thing you’ll have to worry about. Even better is you get consistent quality over the long-term. You can’t say the same about hiring IT professionals on a freelance basis. Even working with an offsite IT company can lead to fluctuations in quality if you’re dealing with different techs each time.
Your company is staffed with experts in all sorts of areas. Why should computer security be any different?
IT Reliability When Your Company Needs It Most
The consistently high-quality level of service through an MSP also brings with it the promise of reliability. If you work with an offsite IT team, if you and they are in vastly different time zones, what do you do when your computer network goes down early Wednesday evening and you have a potential partner flying in Friday morning and a report due tomorrow?
Well, you can’t do much in that situation. You’d have to wait until your IT team is available again to get help with your problem. By that point, you have certainly lost many valuable hours. Now you’ll have to work nights and crunch to get everything done on time, provided it’s still possible at that point.
Your Dallas MSP will let you know in their contract what their working hours are. They’ll probably have a policy about emergency hours such as assisting on nights, holidays, and weekends. Do make sure you pay attention to that part of the contract.
Every company owner thinks they won’t have a problem with their network crashing at the worst possible time until that’s exactly what happens. You need a contingency plan in the form of a trusted MSP.
Conclusion
A Dallas managed services IT firm promises consistent, affordably-priced, reliable service on a contractual basis that can scale with your company. Your MSP will take care of innovating cutting-edge hardware and software so your staff doesn’t have to. They’ll also keep your company compliant with ever-changing data regulations.
We hope this article has convinced you to contact a Dallas MSP today!
