Technology is changing incredibly fast in today’s world. In the markets that are continuously growing, for example, the food and beverage industry, this means that companies not only need to keep up with the right standards and regulations but also the technology that comes with it.

Most internal IT services aren’t equipped to keep up with the pace of technical innovation. Often their support resources are overloaded by huge amounts of 'run and maintain' activities needed to keep things moving forward rather than spending time on looking into or training resources related to technological innovation that will allow them to simplify support activities and become more effective.

As a result, for many businesses, their IT is reactive instead of proactive. They struggle to keep up with the demands of a growing business in a digital world. This is why outsourcing IT services to a third-party provider like Quistor is an excellent way to go if you want your company to survive, or even better, thrive.

Whether you’re talking about outsourcing your ERP, cloud, database or analytics support, it comes with a lot of benefits. That’s why in recent years the demand for Managed Services has grown enormously. Especially small to medium-sized businesses can benefit largely from these services. Small IT teams can quickly become overloaded with the amount of work necessary to keep everything running smoothly. Partnering with a Managed Services Provider (MSP) gives them access to the latest technology and helps them keep up with middle-market and enterprise organizations.

But really, Managed Services benefits all companies in every industry. Let’s take a closer look at some of the advantages.

1. Cost savings

When a company contracts a Managed Services Provider, the logical result is that it lowers labour costs and avoids investing in areas which are not part of their core business, like becoming and IT services company. Instead, you have expert consultants ready to support you from day one on a scalable basis.

Moreover, the service-level agreement (SLA) is specifically tailored to your company’s unique needs, which avoids you worrying about unexpected service costs. And as it prevents IT service interruptions and outages, you minimize the risk and reduce further losses of your investment.

If your Managed Services provider has a solid strategic relationship with your solutions or cloud provider, it’s even better for your business and more importantly, your customers.

2. Scalability

Like any business, you don’t always need an equal level of support throughout the whole year, or over every part of your support requirements, infrastructure or application landscape (stack). With an MSP you can scale up or down on your IT support service requirements without issues and based upon what your business’s needs.

This is ideal for companies in for example the Agriculture Industry because it means that you adapt depending on the season to match your production fluctuations, as well as the changes to your organization to meet future strategies. You can get support as needed to handle growth spurts or rising IT problems.

3. Improved risk management

Being a business means you are prone to a certain amount of risk. By engaging with a managed services partner such as Quistor, and agreeing on SLA you mitigate these risks. In addition, MSPs have industry-specific knowledge about compliance regulations, as well as upfront knowledge related to patch releases in order to stay code current. They should guide you on the best path to improve your risk management. Besides that, MSPs have access to modern and secure infrastructure and software solutions, which will allow you to become more innovative and future proof.

4. Focus on your core business

Both business owners and internal IT staff would much rather focus on innovation and developing new revenue-generating activities, like product development or the creation of new applications or services, than on mundane, or should I say ”run & maintain”, IT tasks. But as IT responsibilities increase, it becomes more and more difficult for employees to focus on new tasks.

Outsourcing IT responsibilities can relieve internal staff of day-to-day IT operations and help desk duties and therefore free more time to focus on the core business, without the distraction of technical troubleshooting. This way the IT department can focus more and more on supporting the business to achieve its strategic goals, which will result in being ahead of your competition.

5. 24/7 Support

When you partner with an MSP like Quistor, we don’t just occasionally check up on you or contact you once something is down. Instead, we offer 24x7x365 services to make sure your IT systems keep running smoothly all the time and we aim to proactive resolve issues from resulting in any downtime. This means no more sleepless nights worrying if everything is running as it should and you won’t even notice there was a problem in the first place.

In conclusion, outsourcing your business’s IT services to an MSP like Quistor is a great strategy if you want your company to grow and be future proof. It gives you 24x7x365 scalable support that saves costs, mitigates risks and gives you the space to focus on your core business.