Financial Advantages of Managed Services for Small Businesses

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Financial Advantages of Managed IT Services for Small BusinessesWe’ve released our latest Report, “The Financial Advantages of Managed IT Services for Small Businesses”, detailing how Managed IT Services from a locally owned and operated Managed IT Service like FlexITechs can save your small business money and increase uptime, productivity and security at the same time.

We’ve examined the wages and benefits for different levels of IT employees on Delmarva and Benefits nationally and compared the cost of internal IT staff or having employees do their own troubleshooting with assistance from external computer repair companies to the cost of having a Managed IT Service handle the typical Delmarva small business’s IT support.

You can obtain your copy of the report here.

As always, you can contact me personally at ericm@flexitechs.com or the company by phone at 302-537-4198 or by filling out our Contact form.

 

How Managed IT Services Reduce Unexpected Downtime Costs

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We hear it over and over. “This is NOT a good time to be having computer problems!”

Truth be told, there never is a good time to have computer problems.

A Managed IT Services Provider (MSP) such as FlexITechs can alleviate unexpected computer problems with remote monitoring and maintenance that first, prevents common problems and detects minor issues before they become major headaches resulting in downtime, and second, can do much of that work remotely and after hours so you don’t lose time working.

In short, we take the inconvenience out of computer problems.

We can see when your Internet goes down, see when software is installed or uninstalled that might cause a problem, restrict all of those Windows updates and their time-consuming restarts to after hours, detect that your hard drive is filling up and free up space, and a host of other issues and maintenance tasks to reduce the disruption of unexpected downtime.

Often, we will know you have a problem and take care of it before you know yourself.

We all know downtime can be costly, both with tangible and intangible costs.

In a 2020 survey of small and medium business owners, Infrascale, a cloud-based data protection company, reported that:

  • 37 percent of SMBs said they lost customers to downtime
  • 17 percent said they lost revenue to it
  • Almost 25 percent said their network has gone offline in the past year.
  • More than a third don’t know what the cost of one hour of downtime would be for their business
  • 27 percent said downtime would cost less than $10,000 an hour, 26 percent said it would be between $10,000 and $20,000, and the rest said above $20,000 per hour
  • 29 percent cited business disruption and 21 percent lost employee productivity as the biggest downtime risks for their company

With downtime creating so much risk, turning the nuts and bolts of the network over to an experienced MSP makes even more sense, particularly when the cost of doing so would be significantly less than in-house IT staff and probably less than handing IT tasks over to an employee with other responsibilities.

We will learn your IT setup so we can rectify any problems in short order, be available to answer employee tech questions, and most importantly, respond quickly when an issue does arise, with a 1-hour response time guarantee.

We will also take the time to understand your business, your goals, and how technology can help you achieve them.

On the financial side, you’ll have a budgetable flat monthly rate to pay instead of costs that match the unpredictability of downtime in unmanaged networks.

There’s no reason to wait until disaster strikes to start looking for help. Learn more by calling us at 302-537-4198, emailing me personally at ericm@flexitechs.com, or submitting our Contact form.

An IT service whose financial interests are aligned with yours

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I can still remember the first few years of our computer repair business in the early 2000s. We’d wake up in the morning and like our clients, have our schedule planned out for the day.

Then, boom! A frantic call for help would not only blow up our schedule, but the schedule of the client on the other end, too.

But, hey, at least we were getting paid, right? I mean, if things didn’t break, we didn’t make money.

It sure didn’t seem right, though, that FlexITechs could profit while the client suffered waiting for me to arrive with my big bag full of parts, pieces and tools to spend the better part of the day getting nothing else done while I toiled in front of the client’s broken computer.

Then in 2008, the terms “Managed Services Provider” and “MSP” first popped up in my computer repair forums.

It took awhile to figure out what those terms meant and how to become an MSP, but it took no time at all for me to recognize one of the primary benefits of Managed IT Services to our clients …

It aligned our financial interests with theirs.

You see, no matter how well-intentioned, we could not escape the simple fact of the Break / Fix IT services model that we only profited when our clients’ computer systems broke.

That all began to change when we added Managed IT Services to our portfolio.

Now, we charge a flat monthly fee with a guaranteed response time that aligns our financial interests with our clients’ financial interests by:

  • Costing us money if we don’t respond promptly to calls for help
  • Costing us money if we have to interrupt our day to respond to calls for help
  • Making us money when our clients’ computer systems run smoothly, just like our clients make money when their systems runs smoothly

If you want a higher level of IT service that proactively maintains your network and computer systems from an IT company whose financial interests are aligned with yours, we should talk about the FlexIT Managed IT Services program.

To chat, call us now at 302-437-4198.

Benefits of Partnering with an MSP

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While a “computer guy” can satisfactorily serve residential customers and micro-businesses (a handful of employees and computers), that type of IT relationship doesn’t work well for most small- to medium-sized organizations.

A business that relies on technology to operate efficiently and securely but can’t justify the employment costs of a full-time IT person or department needs more than just a computer guy.

It needs a trustworthy partner that can provide the services of an IT Department at a far lower cost and whose financial interests in the relationship align with the client’s.

That’s what makes Managed IT Service Providers such as FlexITechs a good fit for small organizations with 10 to 200 employees.

Let’s start with the financial interests.

A break-fix computer service, no matter how well-intentioned, can only make money when your systems break down.

That obviously conflicts with your financial interests. You need your computer systems to run smoothly for peak productivity and profitability.

Because MSPs charge a budgetable flat monthly rate, like you, we can only be profitable when your computer systems run smoothly as  fixing broken systems cuts into our profit too.

Like our motto says, “We don’t want to fix your computers. We want to prevent them from breaking in the first place.”

From the moment we sit down with you (or Zoom with you for now) to learn your business and discuss your current and future technology needs, you will see that an MSP takes the partnership aspect of the relationship seriously.

MSPs become the de facto IT Department for SMBs with proactive remote monitoring, maintenance, repairs and a Help Desk for employees, using the power of the Internet and remote access tools to provide the same services as an in-house IT person.

A true MSP will also manage technology vendors on your behalf to keep the owner and employees out of the fray of the vendor blame game when they start kicking the ball to each other.

But beyond mere IT services, the best MSPs consult with you on an ongoing basis to ensure that your technology matches your current and future business needs. For instance, will you need remote access for your employees after the pandemic subsides? Should you buy another server or switch entirely to cloud-based applications?

MSPs do all of this for a flat monthly rate that you can budget for and do so with a guaranteed response time (FlexITechs’ guarantee is a 1-hour response time).

So, if your business relies on technology and needs your network and computer systems to run smoothly with minimal downtime, you likely need more than a “computer guy”.

If that’s you, whether you only have a computer guy now or have an IT department but could use more help there with mundane network management and maintenance tasks to free up your IT personnel for more productive pursuits, or you need to fill an opening in your IT department, do your business a favor and consider the FlexIT Managed IT Services Program before you make any decisions.

Just give us a call at 302-537-4198, email us at ericm@flexitechs.com, or submit the Contact form on this page.