4 Ways a Managed Service Provider Can Help Scale Your Business

Improper growth is mainly one of the major reasons that small and medium-sized businesses in particular fail, but not necessarily in ways that you might think. Yes, growing too slowly can be detrimental to even the strongest organisation — but there are a range of ways in which growth that is far too rapid can kill a business, too.

Technology plays a major role in a business’ ability to scale properly and to that end, you have two major options that you need to consider. You can choose to keep everything in-house, essentially acting as a one-man IT department in an effort to control things as much as possible, or you can choose to partner with a managed service provider to help make sure that your technology is properly aligned with your short and long-term business objectives.

In truth, a managed service provider can help you to improve and scale your business in four major ways — all of which are worth exploring.

1. Making Better Use of Strategic Resources

Perhaps the most important way an MSP can help scale your business is in helping you position yourself to make better use of the strategic resources that are available to you. One of the major problems with running a ‘one-man IT operation’ is that you‘re usually unable to look at the bigger picture and plan strategically for the long-term, which is required for your business to grow at a regular pace.

Think about it like this: you need to be on the cutting edge of technology as you continue to grow. But by keeping everything in-house, so much of your time is focused on preserving the status quo that you can’t devote the right resources to propel your business forward. An MSP, on the other hand, can likely provide you with someone like a vCIO or dedicated Strategy Manager to help you plan strategically and proactively for long-term scalability.

2. Superior Availability

Along the same lines, a managed service provider can help scale your business by enabling greater expandability through superior availability of technological resources. If your IT department were in-house, opening a new location or even expanding your existing one requires recruiting new team members, additional overhead, payroll and insurance considerations, and so much more. Not only that, but these become issues each and every time you have to hire a new employee.

With an MSP, on the other hand, there is no additional effort needed on your behalf. If you’re opening an additional location and need to set up a whole new infrastructure, you don’t have to pay (and train) people to do that. You can just make a call to your MSP and everything is taken care of.

3. The Budget Factor

Another important way an MSP can help scale your business involves taking care of The Budget Factor, or guiding you through the different types of budget spikes that can cripple even the strongest of businesses.

There are many unexpected hits that your budget can take when it comes to technology, often at the worst possible time. You may suddenly have a pressing need to replace aging hardware. Your software licenses need to be renewed and you had no idea because you didn’t have a dedicated person to keep track of this. Downtime also usually hits at the worst possible time and now you’ve got a problem that needs to be diagnosed before it can be fixed — all of which requires precious hours you don’t have.

With an MSP, none of this is an issue. Your managed service provider is responsible for everything — from implementing new hardware to performing necessary upgrades to maintaining resources, software licensing, business continuity and more.

Instead of setting aside money to account for unpredictable budget spikes, you can replace them with one low (and predictable) monthly fee. In exchange, you get to reallocate those funds with an eye focused on the type of growth you need when you need it the most.

4. Unbeatable Cost Savings

Finally, one of the most critical ways that a managed service provider can help scale your business also has to do with ROI — the cost of savings that you get to enjoy as a result.

We’re living in an age where IT spending is on the rise, but this doesn’t have to be the case with an MSP. According to a study conducted by Gartner, IT spending worldwide is expected to hit $3.7 trillion by 2018, which is a 4.3% increase over the $3.5 trillion that businesses will spend by the end of this year.

But rather than continuing to devote a higher percentage of your budget every year specifically to IT, you can have everything you need for one affordable monthly fee that is comparatively much lower than what you’re paying right now. This flat fee will not only make it easier for your company to budget correctly in the first place, but it will also go a long way towards freeing up the type of capital you need to take advantage of business opportunities as they happen. This works a lot better than watching opportunities pass you by due to lack of appropriate funds, which is more often the case right now.

The Powernet Approach

At Powernet, we deeply understand what an important role technology ROI plays in your ability to operate with maximum efficiency every day.  It also makes it easy to grow your organisation at the rate you need to guarantee better outcomes across the board.

If you’d like to find out more information about the ways in which an MSP can help scale and grow your business, or if you have any other questions that you’d like to see answered, don’t delay — contact Powernet today.