We’ve written about it in previous articles, but hiring a Managed Services Provider can save you money over hiring an in-house team or IT manager.

Factor in you would typically have to hire an IT manager and then possibly a 1st and 2nd line IT technician.

Does it really make financial sense for an SME business owner to be hiring multiple IT staff, just to handle the IT? You have to also factor in the costs of doing so, possible training courses they may need and retention issues as staff may leave.

What happens when there are no current IT issues, what do you do with their time? There will be time working on projects, but there may be times when there literally is nothing to do and believe me I’ve worked in those environments before.

Also considering their salaries, 2-3 x full-time staff members at £30,000 – £60,000 per year (location dependent) and suddenly does it seem like a worthy investment to make?

A Managed Services Provider (MSP) would be handling all the costs for training their own staff and any certification they went for, which does take time and money and your business will likely not want to spend on it.

If your business decides that they do want to hire someone in-house, it is highly unlikely they will be skilled enough to solve every problem.

They may figure it out, but consider the lost productivity time while they learn how to fix the issue or wing it (please no).

Without constant learning, a person’s skill level will not evolve and the likelihood the tech would be left behind and technical issues could suddenly get worse and suddenly they could be in deep trouble with no way out.

Hamilton Group has processes for dealing with tickets, we also have a vast knowledge base and our Learning Hub on the website that’s forever growing and used by our customers, visitors and contractors.

We are not saying just hire us and don’t worry about your IT. On the contrary, having someone onsite with a little bit of knowledge of IT is a godsend.

Perhaps you have a Manager that has some IT knowledge and can help out quickly reboot troublesome devices or check printers (IT providers typically hate printers).

A good IT provider can work with any in-house team members, and we offer this in the form of Co-Managed IT.

There is nothing worse than ringing a company and being left waiting for the line to answer or ringing for someone and finding they are away from their desk.

How do you know you are calling the right person, anyway? Scary right, but what if you spent an hour on the phone to be told when they answer that they are the wrong department or they don’t offer support for that?

An MSP will have relationships with the software vendors and if there is an issue can get the right support to implement the fixes, in a large number of cases a user wouldn’t even be able to contact the software vendor directly as it would have been provided by the IT provider.

An MSP provides you peace of mind, not only that but we’ve evolved to be integral to every business.

You no longer need to call a random IT guy to come and fix a problem or your cousin’s sister’s boyfriend (exaggeration I know).

A Managed Services Provider (MSP) will be proactive rather than reactive, this means we look for issues before they affect you or at least that is our aim.

There will still be issues that we have to deal with in a reactive sense, but we do our best to prevent them from happening in the first place.

MSPs should have the best cyber security products in place, and make sure policies and system settings are all set up correctly to ensure your business can be protected.

Training for new software should be available, and when new software is introduced offering a workshop on how to use it on-site should be an essential offering.

If your MSP isn’t taking IT knowledge seriously or using the best tools for the job then they shouldn’t be in IT anymore.

We should be using the best tools available to do our job securely and accurate. An MSP also will work with other companies and sometimes they are the same types of companies and people, this means they will have processes and solutions that can be duplicated and used in an automated fashion very easily.

An MSP is typically knowledgeable about a wide range of topics, often where they do not have the skills they will hire someone or worth with a third-party contractor.

Things like Windows updates do occasionally go wrong, but your IT provider should be aware if there are any problems and can liaise with vendors to come up with a solution or they can solve it themselves, due to experience.

An MSP like Hamilton Group, are there to take care of your IT, so your business is safe.

MSPs will implement checklists and a proactive approach to setting up your environment. Hackers are constantly trying to get in through outdated, vulnerable software.

Your MSP should set up a patch management process and ensure the latest updates are tested and deployed for both Windows Updates and third-party software.

Cyber Essentials recommends software patching is completed before 14 days. However, sometimes we need to actually wait more sometimes if there have been issues. Often a breach can occur and it can take a year or more to detect any breaches.

An MSP will ensure that updates are not forgotten or delayed too long and that any security breaches are plugged in to ensure you are safe.

MSPs uses tools that often are run by Cyber Security experts themselves, if someone tries to take over the machine or affect the office the tools that the MSP provides should stop that in its tracks

Thank you for reaching the end of the article, these are just a few reasons why you should use a managed services provider.

Whether you are looking to save money or have an IT provider take care of you right from the off then an MSP would be the right call for you.

If you want a proactive and knowledgeable approach to IT get in touch, simply call 01423 438953 or you can either email hello@hgmssp.co.uk or fill out the form below.