Managed Service Providers and their ability to provide reinforcements
Anyone who has watched a war movie or played a video game about the war knows the importance of reinforcements. Sometimes you face a problem which you just do not have enough people to solve. In such a situation the only thing that you can do is call for reinforcement and hope that they show up in time to save you. Managed service providers do the same job for many organizations in their time of need. Let’s look at some situations and how MSPs can help.
Moving offices
This is a situation which every startup faces. Once you are successful and you go from being a small company to a medium sized company you will need to move to a new office that can house more people. Moving isn’t easy and moving and setting up your IT infrastructure is one of the hardest part of the job. If you only use your own IT employees you will not have enough people to facilitate the move unless you hire extra people, which is a huge commitment.
On the other hand if you work with an MSP you can tell them that you need some extra help. They will simply send some people to help with the moving. In the end you will pay the MSP extra for the extra people – you will just have to pay for the time you needed the extra people. No extra hiring and no stressing about where you will find people.
Peak sales season
This is something we see a lot. Many companies have a season in which sales increase beyond normal figures. For example, if your company sells jewelry you will see a sales spike around Valentine ’s Day. If your company sells school supplies the surge happens in back to school season. As you scale up your sales staff you also need more help with your IT work. You can hire extra people and go through the whole interview process, then let them go once the season is over. Or you can do the smart thing and just get some people from a managed service provider. Managed service providers have trained and experienced people available for their clients.
Complicated IT issues
All organizations use different software and hardware configurations. Now, let’s assume that you use a specialized product which only one of the people in your IT department knows how to fix. Everyone knows how to use it and the whole IT department knows how to fix the small issues with it but you only have one expert. Now, what happens if that expert is on vacation? Will you just wait for them to come back? Hire another expert in the field, which will be a very expensive and time taking process? Or just call up your MSP and tell them the issue. MSPs have experts in different software and hardware available, and will be able to send someone over to help you without any issues.
