In an age where technology is often a core driver of business growth, effective and reliable IT performance is more vital than ever. A structured, planned approach to IT support can help keep your business operating at peak efficiency and optimal performance.

That’s where managed service providers are playing an increasingly critical role by providing the consistent management and optimal balance of resources businesses need to help drive productivity, protect data and assets, and maximize return on investment.

With your IT strategy and support services managed by an outside provider, you benefit from best-in-class expertise and technical capabilities along with an assortment of resource and cost optimization advantages that span across operational and business functions:

1. IT planning and strategy

Today’s IT environments are complex and fast-moving. To meet ongoing efficiency and performance goals, you need an IT strategy that supports and aligns with your core business objectives. Intelligent IT planning starts with a comprehensive assessment of your IT infrastructure and operational environment to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses and help you better understand how to best leverage existing resources and technology.

With years of experience across multiple technologies and domains, MSPs can leverage their business planning and technology procurement expertise to help you create a roadmap for performance improvement―providing a coordinated framework for managing changes to business priorities.

Your MSP can help you transition to new technologies and platforms at the most favorable time, while extracting maximum value from your legacy investments. They will evaluate workflows and processes to identify potential areas of improvement and opportunities for cost savings.

Related: Managed IT Services vs. Traditional IT Support: What’s The Difference?

2. Preventative maintenance

Ongoing monitoring of your network infrastructure and IT environment can help minimize downtime, reduce costs, and enhance performance. Rather than waiting for problems to emerge, you can proactively identify areas that are vulnerable and take action before they impact your business.

MSPs are ideally equipped to help ease the burden of day-to-day network management. By using advanced evaluation and reporting tools they can collect information and analyze the performance of your network and IT infrastructure.

This insight allows you to chart performance over time and identify patterns and trends that could lead to disruption. It also enables better decision making around future investments and areas of improvement to help ensure your network and supporting technology is reliable, efficient, and secure.

3. Responsive support

A proactive approach to technology management requires ongoing collaboration and responsive support on behalf of your IT provider. One advantage of an MSP is their ability to access the latest analysis and reporting tools to track your performance and identify critical areas for improvement and investment.

Recurring checks and ongoing follow up help make sure their recommendations are delivering the results you need and are aligned with your business goals. With responsive and reliable support from a partner you can trust, your in-house team can focus on growth and performance instead of stressing over routine management tasks.

4. Technology management

Understanding what performance functionality your business needs is essential. One important advantage MSPs bring to the table is their knowledge and expertise around the latest technologies and operational best practices that can help boost performance, increase efficiency, and safeguard critical business assets.

MSPs are well-versed in the need to create a strategic IT roadmap with an inherent focus on long-term growth and achieving maximum return on investments. These experts understand the complexities of technology integration and work closely with you to make sure your IT decisions align with your business priorities.

The best MPSs have well-established vendor relationships and have deep experience identifying, evaluating, and procuring the best technologies and products across a range of platforms and domains, including:

What You Get When Working With BACS IT Consulting Group

Smarter, more intelligent IT

One of the biggest advantages of working with an outsourced IT provider like BACS IT is the potential for operational efficiencies. With a fixed-cost support model, you benefit from predictable pricing and manageable costs, allowing you to better plan for larger IT investments. And with a proactive IT support strategy, you are better able to anticipate problems before they can disrupt your business.

With knowledge and expertise needed to keep your infrastructure running at peak performance, your MSP can handle any number of routine or specialized tasks including remote monitoring, IT planning and strategy, and technology evaluation and procurement. By delegating ongoing IT support tasks to a reliable partner, you can turn your attention to more pressing priorities with confidence that your IT operation will be running efficiently and securely.

Related: Hear About Companies Like Yours That Benefited from Managed IT Services

Enhanced security

We have deep experience in the latest security tools and best practices to safeguard your enterprise business and IT systems against today’s increasingly malicious security threats. Not only can MSPs provide monitoring services, but they have the deep expertise needed to help prevent attacks through a range of proactive measures. With customized backup and recovery and business continuity planning solutions, your service provider can help restore systems and get your operation back online in the event of a disaster―quickly replacing faulty equipment, eliminating system vulnerabilities, and recovering systems and data with minimal disruption.

Peace of mind

Businesses often have little time to focus on the routine functions of infrastructure management, worrying about underlying issues such as dependability, patching and updates, and speed of network connections. By outsourcing IT support tasks to a trusted partner, you can focus more on more strategic priorities with greater peace of mind knowing that your IT operation is running smoothly and efficiently.

Making IT a strategic priority

Changing business models are driving a shift in the role of IT―from leveraging technology and support of the business, to the higher, more strategic goal of driving business value. Your MSP can help make sure your investments and support strategy is aligned with your core business goals, providing strategic guidance that caters to your business needs.

Following are some of the core performance and cost savings benefits of working with BACS IT:

Better insight for more informed investment decisions
Better knowledge to address ongoing performance, security, and compliance issues
Optimized ROI through better researched and well-timed technology updates
More seamless integration of business systems, hardware, and processes
Enhanced security through better identification of IT strengths and weaknesses
Optimized availability and reliability of resources and applications
Better ability to meet business requirements for uptime, compliance and security
More accurate decisions and actions based on an long track record of experience and success
Increased operational efficiency and better optimization of internal resources
Increased security and reliability of IT operations

Choosing the right MSP

Determining where and how you might benefit from an MSP starts with a careful evaluation of your current in-house resources, business goals and growth plans. Does your in-house IT team struggle with time to focus on big-picture projects? Is your business looking to move some or all of your data to the cloud? Are your IT costs inconsistent and unpredictable? Does your business currently have a disaster contingency plan for your business? Do you plan to grow or expand your business in the future? Does your business store and manage sensitive data?

Not all providers are created equal and choosing the wrong one could prove costly. As your business needs evolve over time, more effort is needed to help ensure that business goals and priorities are carefully aligned with IT strategy. Selecting a service provider that can deliver the range of capabilities you need is critical.