If you’re busy growing your business, most owners or executives of companies have no interest in growing the back office – the area of the business that supports your front line employees that are securing new business. Your company’s phones, printers, workstations and servers are all needed to keep your employees productive, but the idea of having staff to maintain the hardware seems like a drain on money and resources that could be focused on growing the business. Hiring more employees means not only the cost of the salary, but other costs including taxes, insurance and training costs in terms of money and time. That’s where an IT help desk from a managed IT department helps.
If you rely on an in-house staff person to provide IT support, or even if you outsource some or all of your IT support and infrastructure management, you may have experienced some of these situations that frustrate your employees who just want to keep getting their work done. What happens if the functioning or health of your company’s IT network and workstations rely solely on the knowledge/skillset of one or two key people? Do you worry that when this employee, who knows your network, leaves the company, productivity may suffer because no one really has the time or knowledge to quickly and easily solve the technical issue? Maybe you use a small outside technology support person, but what if you question whether the provider truly has your best interest in mind. Is this provider offering a service that is built around what they are comfortable with and just steering you away from a solution that could greatly enhance your productivity or save you money (or both)?
Companies who want to focus on growing their business without the headache of managing IT or printing issues should consider outsourcing their IT management to a local service provider who can support your employees at a flat monthly price. A company like mpsWORKS and its managed IT service provides clients with 24/7/365 support with the sole focus on mitigating, eliminating and preventing downtime for our clients. The services offered by local IT companies revolve around being available for any service need for clients’ employees at any time.
Why is paying for hourly IT support a bad idea? It places a conflict between you and the hourly IT firm. When you’re paid by the hour there is less incentive to resolve problems quickly. A real-world example would be hiring a contractor to build a deck for your house. Wouldn’t you prefer a quote with a flat rate to build that deck so that you’re not worried the contractor isn’t working fast enough? A flat rate IT provider does not charge labor costs so companies will not see “out of scope” labor, hourly rate sheets or any hidden charges. The technicians supporting your employees are trained to solve your issue and prevent future service calls.
An hourly IT firm doesn’t lose when you have more problems with your systems because the cost for helping fix IT issues is shifted to you, not the IT provider. Many companies get tired seeing their IT service bills fluctuate month to month and so they give an employee the task to “triage” the IT problems to ensure that the IT service company is actually needed. Your employee assigned to triage problems is being less productive themselves and has the worry that they will need to track all hours of service provided by the IT company. It’s a headache and only leads to a lack of trust between the client and the IT provider.
The alternative to triaging your IT problem that are outsourced is to hire a flat rate IT company with a 24-hour help desk that empowers your employees to pick up the phone and get a quick solution to any IT issue, no matter how minor (like a forgotten password!). With a managed IT department from a local IT service company, the cost is stabilized and the IT service company has the responsibility to keep the network up and running smoothly with as few interruptions as possible.
A flat rate IT company trades a fixed amount of money for an unlimited amount of support for your employees. To make the business model work, their incentive is to keep your network healthy so they will monitor your IT network and continuously patch any security risks that may arise. They are also aware of the latest security and business continuity options that will give you peace of mind that your business network is protected.
mpsWORKS has a 100% US-Based help desk that provides 24/7 service to clients at a flat, per user per month charge. No more haggling over charges for service that you feel should have been less expensive. With flat rate billing if your company grows you only increase by the number of new users. The corollary means that your costs go down if you have a change that reduces your employees.