At IT MAX Group, we’re big believers in the concept of doing what you do best and letting other people do the same. After all, that’s why you got into the business you’re in today: you thought you had a skill, process or product that can make you successful. Stick with that. Yes, you can figure out how to do your own taxes, plumbing or deliveries. It doesn’t mean you should. When you get distracted doing things you aren’t good at, you sabotage your business, miss opportunities and get frustrated in the process. IT MAX Group has seen great growth in the last several years because more small businesses come to realize that in this economic climate they can’t afford to spend time on non-core activities. For most of you, IT support is a non-core activity — and one that’s relatively easy to get help with. Here’s what you have to gain:

Save money:

Most anything you do is better than letting your regular staff handle their own IT needs. That’s just too expensive. We’ve seen some interesting examples of $250/hour attorneys spending hours troubleshooting their desktop computers (a $30/month service with IT MAX Group) or offices full of CPA’s shutting down for the afternoon after a server crash. Few business owners consciously try to quantify the costs of this – but you won’t like the results if you do the math.
Having an IT person on staff may seem like a logical option once you have 15 or 20 people in your office, but after self-service, this is the second most expensive way to go. A going rate for a midlevel IT support person is about $70,000. Add to that benefits, training and turnover costs, and you’ll often find your entire IT budget eaten up by this one individual – who by the way usually has a rather singular skill set.

Realizing this, many small businesses simply contract with an hourly IT consultant on a “pay as you go” basis. That’s a good step forward, but you will soon find out that hourly rates for this kind of help can be pretty high up there. It makes sense: because your hourly consultant never knows when you’ll call, they have to build a cost premium into their hourly rates to account for all the time sit and wait for the phone to ring. When you get charged $90-$150 an hour for emergency IT help, every call ends up costing you a fortune. Worse yet, many small businesses try to avoid these costs and start defaulting back to the self-service model.

The best way we’ve found for small businesses to get consistent and affordable IT help is with a managed services model. For a low flat monthly rate, you can get a policy that guarantees performance of your PCs, laptops, servers and network components – regardless of what it takes for the provider to make this happen. Depending on your environment, this can save you 50% to 80% over hourly IT consultants. It also makes sense for a service provider like IT MAX Group since we can rather accurately forecast the number and level of people we’ll need to provide you support, and get them booked solid.

Simplify budgeting:

Not only do flat-rate IT support contracts save you money, but you’ll also know how much you’ll have to spend every month. This simplifies budgeting and makes your support infrastructure easy to scale. Added a new employee? Just get a plan for her.

Get better service:

This may seem a bit counter-intuitive, but you actually get better support by going with a managed services provider rather than your own IT staff. Here’s why:

They’re not an employee: Unlike your internal IT staff, an outsourced services provider doesn’t take vacations, doesn’t call in sick and won’t quit on you.
They’re a team: There is more than one person available at any one time to take care of you. Unlike your own IT employee, a good provider can do several things at once, meaning faster problem resolution and greater satisfaction of your users.
More diverse skill sets: A managed services firm can likely bring broader expertise to the table, making it easier for them to troubleshoot complex problems or tackle challenging projects.
Time-tested processes: A large-scale support organization may be just plain better at day-to-day support than you or your IT staff are. From IT asset management tools to remote login capabilities to documented protocols for dealing with common problems, a professional support organization may have more of what it takes to ensure high systems performance and uptime.
Motivation: Unlike your hourly contractor, flat-rate support providers are most profitable when your systems work well, not when they break. You connect the dots.

Spend less on IT equipment:

Companies that have their IT infrastructure professionally managed also report spending less on new equipment. This happens for two reasons:

• Your equipment needs to be replaced less often. It’s usually a combination of good preventative maintenance, stronger security protection and better warranty management. Simply keeping track of your PC and server warranties and renewing them when necessary means you’re never stuck with a repair bill that eclipses the price of the new machine.
• When you do need to add or replace equipment, a managed services provider can usually get you what you need cheaper. A company like IT MAX Group has high-volume, long-standing relationships with equipment providers – and we get a much bigger discount than you do.

Get your projects moving:

Even if you have inside IT staff, they may be too busy with day-to-day support to do any planning or to execute on IT initiatives you’ve outlined for yourself. Outsourcing basic helpdesk support to an experienced vendor may give you the breather you need to get moving on the things you’ve always wanted to do.

If this post sounds like a sales pitch, that’s because it is. If not a sales pitch for IT MAX Group services specifically, than for the idea that letting someone else take care of your IT has a lot of merit to it. The managed services provider industry is growing by some 20% per year because it makes sense – and we have hundreds of customers right here in Chicago saying the same. Want to find out more? Call us at 888-77-ITMAX or email info@itmaxgroup.com.