When small business leaders face IT challenges, they often wonder: should we stick with internal IT staff, or is it time to partner with a managed service provider (MSP)? Evaluating an MSP vs internal IT requires the consideration of several key pros and cons, especially if your organization is in a time of growth or change. Whether it’s due to an IT manager’s departure, rapid company growth, or a cyber-attack, this decision can have lasting impacts on your business. To help you in your evaluation, here are some pros and cons of internal IT compared to hiring an MSP: Keep […]

Mergers and acquisitions have become common in the managed IT service provider industry. Owners often choose to sell their companies for various reasons, such as retirement, access to additional resources, or the desire to cash in on their investments. While acquisitions can bring benefits like increased financial stability, expanded service offerings, and access to new technologies, they can also pose significant challenges that may negatively impact the quality of service provided to clients. It’s important that business leaders recognize the signs that their managed service provider’s (MSP) acquisition might not be going as smoothly as intended. By understanding these potential […]

How does an IT support relationship go bad? It could be that you’ve outgrown your provider. It’s hard to know for sure if that’s the cause of your problems because the signs can be subtle. What’s more, the situation didn’t happen overnight but crept up on you slowly. Everything was great when you first started working together, but now you feel like you’re on a plateau, or maybe even going backwards. And that’s not just IT, but your whole business. When you outgrow your IT provider, it means that your needs are more than they can handle. It could be […]

When IT support isn’t there when you need it, you can feel like you’re falling into a black hole with no way out. Not only does slow IT support response cause frustration for employees, it impacts your whole business. What you end up with is technology that hinders operations instead of enabling them. What happens when IT support is always slow or doesn’t show up at all? Employees lose confidence that IT can help so they stop calling support at all. People try to fix their own issues which diverts them from their work. They ask coworkers for IT help […]

When you’ve decided that you’re done with underperforming IT and you’re looking for a way to turn your situation around fast, Managed IT Services is the solution. Your IT department may have done very well in the past to effectively manage IT and cybersecurity. However, there’s no denying that technology has evolved at a breakneck pace and continuing to do what you’ve always done isn’t going to keep up. You may never have considered bringing in third-party IT support because you think you can’t afford it, or you simply don’t feel like you know enough yet to make an informed […]

What’s the transition to a managed IT services model going to be like? That’s the question that comes up next after you’ve decided that you need to do something different with IT, and managed services are the solution to your problems. Whether you’ve picked a provider or you’re still evaluating your short list, asking questions about what the transition to the new services will look like will help you to be prepared. The managed service provider (MSP) should have an established onboarding process that they follow to get clients started with services. The goal of onboarding is not just to […]

When you’ve decided that managed IT services are a good option for your business and you’re evaluating different companies, you need to understand what’s included and what’s not included in their monthly fee. Evaluating managed services provider (MSP) costs isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so having questions to guide your conversation about what to expect as far as costs is imperative. Before we go any further, let’s identify a price range for managed IT services prices. In general, you can expect to pay between $75 and $250 per user per month so what you pay depends in large part on the […]

What if your IT manager resigned today? What if two or more of your internal IT team needed time off at the same time? What if maternity/paternity leave for multiple IT staff overlapped? What if everyone in the IT department got food poisoning from the takeout meal they shared? We’re getting a little melodramatic here but the point that we’re making is that when you have a small internal IT team, you’re just one situation away from big trouble, especially in a tight job market. How can you make sure that you’re always staffed even if something happens to pull […]