Tag: Outsourced IT

Categories
Casserly Consulting Blog

Reduce Your Costs By Outsourcing Your IT Management

managed_outsource_yourit_400.jpg

Your business deals with all types of troubles, but one trouble that can be extraordinarily costly is when your organization’s technology doesn’t work properly. That’s why many businesses hire an IT staff who work to mitigate technology-related problems. One issue you should be cognizant of is cost. Typically, IT professionals have training, certifications, and experience and demand an above average salary. If you have a small or medium-sized business that is working with tight margins as it is, it can be extremely difficult to take on new personnel costs; especially ones that don’t directly result in bringing revenue through the door.

A popular solution to this quandary is to outsource your organization’s IT management to a managed IT services provider (MSP), like COMPANYNAME. Our certified technicians will first assess your business’ information systems to get a good idea where your inefficiencies lie, then they’ll go to work devising a customized technology and management plan to fit your business’ needs. Starting a relationship with a baseline of knowledge we can deliver value through our cost-saving managed services that include:

  • Hardware & software support: We are the IT guys after all. We have relationships with some of the most notable vendors in the industry so our clients can get the hardware and software solutions they need to be the best version of their business. We’ll also ensure that any software you use will be up to date with the latest threat definitions.
  • Around the clock monitoring: In order to provide the ROI we intend to, our services have to reduce or eliminate your organization’s downtime. That’s why we monitor and proactively maintain your network and infrastructure with our state-of-the-art monitoring software. In doing so, if there is a threat to your network, or your hardware, we’ll know about it immediately, and we can take steps to remediate the issue. This allows you to get more from your hardware and avoid the operational problems that comes when you have to stop to deal with network and infrastructure issues. 
  • Backup and disaster recovery: Your business’ data is an extremely valuable asset, and as such, it has to be protected against situations that arise where you may lose it. Anything as benign as a storm could wipe out a lot of hard work. Our backup and disaster recovery platform not only backs up your data periodically, it creates copies that are sent off-site into the cloud, so that no matter what is thrown at your business, your data will be safe. 
  • Network security: Along with our monitoring and management program, we also ensure that your network is secured from the literally thousands of threats that face it every day. From malware to corruption to infiltration, our network security platform keeps your data available and your network working properly.
  • Vendor management: Along with having access to a myriad of top industry vendors, we also can help you manage your vendors, whether we use them or not.
  • Around the clock IT support: We offer a comprehensive help desk where technicians who have remote access to your end-points can solve situational computing problems for your staff 24/7.
  • Options: We also offer a whole cache of powerful IT solutions including cloud computing, communications, printing, conferencing, and physical security solutions that work for any-sized business.

If you are looking for a way to get the technology that can help you grow your business, you are just looking to reduce your IT management costs, or you are thinking of attempting to get your footing on a new IT initiative, call the IT professionals at COMPANYNAME today at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Casserly Consulting Blog

Which Approach Puts Your IT in a Better Position?

in_house_vs_outsourced_it_management_400.jpg

Technology management is one of the major issues that challenge small businesses. Do you know the various strengths and weaknesses of having an in-house IT department versus an outsourced IT provider? As a managed service provider ourselves, we’re in a unique position to help your business make an educated decision about the future of its IT management.

In-House IT Management
If your business is fortunate enough to have its own in-house IT department, you know what it to get the right people for the job you need to painstakingly assess all applicants. Since, your business’s in-house team will always be at your disposal, your technicians have to be chosen with the applicable know-how to mitigate the technology troubles your organization will most frequently come across.

On the other hand, small and medium-sized businesses are known to have some troubles, even when working with an in-house IT department. Training new team members can be tricky, time consuming, and expensive, especially if your business has complex technologies that need to have dedicated management. Once these technicians are trained to cover the bases your business technology demands, they will only get more expensive; so seeing a substantial return your investment may not be possible.

Managed/Outsourced IT
Outsourced IT provides one of the most sought after assets for a business: predictable technology costs. When you hire a managed service provider, your business will always be using maintained and monitored technology, where issues are solved remotely for a flat monthly fee. An MSP generally stays updated on the latest findings and technologies in the industry, making them more well-rounded technicians than those that are simply concerned with the workings of your business’ current technology. It’s actually much more affordable as well, as you’re only adding one payment to your budget compared to the multiple salaries that would be assaulting payroll for an internal IT department.

The only issue that you’ll encounter with a managed service provider is letting go of the reigns a bit and trusting someone else with control over your business’s IT. Therefore, trust is something that is absolutely crucial if you choose to outsource your IT management.

COMPANYNAME wants your business to benefit from outsourced IT solutions. To find out what we can do for you, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Casserly Consulting Blog

Are You Prepared for Employees to Bring Their Own Devices?

bring_your_own_mobiles_400.jpg

Bring Your Own Device policies have helped many companies save money on technology by allowing employees to use their own devices, rather than taking on the cost of providing devices. However, as much as a BYOD approach can help a business financially, there are some potential drawbacks to adopting one that you should be prepared to deal with.

Managing These Mobile Devices
Whenever there is a Bring Your Own Device strategy enacted, there needs to be Mobile Device Management in action as well. Your MDM software also needs to be monitored, as this will inform you if someone without the proper authorization is accessing data that they shouldn’t be.

However, sufficient monitoring is a time-intensive task. It is even possible that it would require you to add an additional employee to properly make use of your MDM software. Before you commit to these measures, which are a must for successfully implementing BYOD, make sure you have (or can obtain) the resources to run them.

One great solution to mitigate your organization’s overall BYOD costs is the built-in automation that many of today’s Mobile Device Management platforms offer. This automation can be customized and run to allow your technicians to focus on the core aspects of your business’ technology rather than spend all of their time, and your money, monitoring employee smartphones.

Streamlining For Support
A major advantage to providing employees with work devices is the control you have over the devices you provide. By selecting a specific model for your employees to use, you can standardize your systems that much more, and make your IT administrator’s job that much easier. By reducing the variety of devices they need to be familiar with, IT can service them more quickly and effectively.

This can be a drawback to BYOD, as it makes support a more arduous task and–as a result–more costly. With a variety of devices and their specific issues, it becomes a more time-intensive task to identify and resolve any problems. Taking this into account, it may be a more cost-effective option to invest in standardized mobile devices for your company to use, rather than try to manage the variety of devices your workforce likely uses based on personal preference. This is a variable that you will need to consider based on your specific circumstances and abilities. Do you finance devices for your staff? Or, manage the varying devices your staff will bring?

Leaving Yourself Vulnerable
Not all devices are equally suited for use in a BYOD strategy–sometimes, a new feature can lead to a pretty severe vulnerability. Take, for example, any device with iOS 11 installed. Despite having switches in its control center to activate and deactivate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, these switches don’t actually deactivate their connection. This leaves these devices vulnerable, and if they were a part of a BYOD implementation, your business becomes vulnerable, as well.

Wasted Resources
Often, the question isn’t if BYOD makes sense, it’s if BYOD makes sense for a particular employee to have access to. Some companies will reimburse their staff for the personal data that they use. However, if an employee’s responsibilities don’t really require the use of a mobile device, having them involved in a BYOD strategy is akin to paying for their personal use of the device; and, can hinder their overall productivity.

Don’t get us wrong–BYOD can be a great benefit to your business and its bottom line. You just shouldn’t dive in without considering the potential downsides and planning how you will go about solving these problems. The IT professionals at COMPANYNAME can help. To learn more, call us today at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Business

Here’s a Cost-Effective Alternative to Onboarding Additional IT Staff

b2ap3_thumbnail_outsourced_it_400.jpg An internal IT department serves two primary purposes for businesses. The first is to keep an eye on your technology problems and resolve them. The second is to plan for the future and implement new strategies that will help your organization function more effectively. The problem for the average small business is that their IT department often doesn’t have the luxury of performing both of these tasks.

The root of the problem is that most IT departments are too busy dealing with technology support issues and requests from employees to innovate. Eventually, this lack of innovation could cost your business money.

Do You Know What You’re Paying Your IT Department For?
By definition, your IT department is supposed to plan methods for your business to improve its infrastructure through any means necessary. On the side, they are supposed to help your organization by providing technical support for your assets. By adhering to this model, your IT department should be able to find ways to improve your technology infrastructure, while providing technical assistance for those who need it. The problem is that, as technology becomes more complicated, the help demanded by employees increases.

While it might seem ideal to approach IT support with an internal IT department, it rarely works out. IT departments just don’t have as much time as they need to really work toward improving anything. Often times, these issues are either recurring or resolved simply by rebooting the system, which is a waste of your IT department’s time.

Is Your IT Department Taking Your Company Nowhere?
While your IT department struggles to keep up, your team will naturally need to make forward progress. However, when all they do is respond to problems without making progress in order to prevent them, it’s easy to overlook the fact that many of these problems can be prevented in the future with a little innovation in the present. Plus, when routine maintenance is foregone for the sake of solving short-term problems, you’ll lose out in the long-term due to decreased performance and security issues.

As you can see (perhaps even from your own experience), an in-house IT department is often more distracted by problems that aren’t even theirs to resolve, which pulls them away from work that could make your business better. As a result, many organizations seek to outsource the IT work of their IT department’s in order to make up lost time. This can include innovation, but more often than not, you’ll find that outsourcing routine IT tasks and technology support to be helpful to your company’s overall goals.

After all, your technicians were hired to innovate, so why not give them the opportunity to do so?

To learn more about outsourced IT, reach out to COMPANYNAME. We can provide a help desk, network audits, and so many more valuable IT services that will help your organization improve efficiency. Call us today at PHONENUMBER.

Categories
Technology

Explaining Managed IT to Busy Business Owners

b2ap3_thumbnail_managed_it_service_agreement_400.jpg As a business, you focus on providing a specific good or service to your area. This means spending a considerable amount of time trying to make your organization the go-to SMB for that particular service. All organizations specialize in a certain craft, but sometimes their skills may fall short of their needs in areas that lay outside this expertise. Outsourcing is a simple way for businesses to leverage skills that aren’t part of their expertise without taking the time to learn the skill themselves, and it’s an invaluable part of any business owner’s strategy.

Let’s use managed IT services as an example. While enterprises might have the budget and workforce to accommodate managing on-site networks and hardware, it’s unlikely that the SMB does as well. Technology maintenance requires careful attention to detail, which can only be offered by trained professionals who understand the importance of their task. IT maintenance and management isn’t something that can be learned overnight.

While the benefits are significant, the major roadblock for organizations isn’t implementing a new IT management model; rather, it’s their limited budget. They struggle to resolve problems with their IT systems without breaking their budget, and the typical break-fix IT company isn’t devoted to saving them any cash on technology repair. Instead, a managed service provider tries to take proactive measures to prevent issues from happening in the first place.

Comparing the two solutions side by side gives more than enough reason to forsake break-fix IT services. If you can prevent problems from happening in the first place, why wouldn’t you? When a server or workstation breaks down, countless files and hours of productivity are lost, making recovery difficult, if not impossible.

Managed IT allows for fixed monthly payments, taking the unpredictability out of managing technology. Unlike break-fix IT, which capitalizes on your business’s technology breaking down, managed IT services aim to prevent this from happening in the first place; saving your business money in the long run. You’ll find that when you experience minimal trouble with your IT, the possibilities are quite literally endless. You can invest more time and money into your business’s other aspects.

To learn more about managed IT services, reach out to us at PHONENUMBER.