Do you have an in-house IT team? Maybe your team is just overloaded with work from daily maintenance, project management, and constant training. Is it time for you to engage a managed service provider? A managed service provider will free up your engineering team, allowing them to concentrate on creative, value-building projects. MSPs are valuable whenever there are tasks that can be managed by those who understand the products and services that make up your IT infrastructure. So, when should you engage with a managed service provider?
That’s a great question, let’s dive into it!
When your engineering team is being used for routine tasks.
When routine tasks are occupying valuable engineering resource time, it's usually best to engage a service that specializes in maintenance, monitoring, and incident response.
Engineering resource time should be spent on innovative and mission critical activities, such as designing and re-designing existing infrastructure, performing upgrades, and introducing new feature sets. You know... the stuff that made them want to be an engineer, right?
When you need to force a new perspective.
An engineering team can easily fall into a rut, becoming locked into viewing problems from a certain perspective and ultimately groupthink can overtake the team. Bringing in a managed service provider allows your engineering team to navigate a new way of approaching problems.
They will be able to use the managed service provider for more mundane tasks, ultimately freeing up time to tackle more challenging issues.
When you need some additional help.
Everyone needs help every now and then, and that’s okay! If you need assistance mapping out an existing, as-built environment, a managed service provider can offer you a fast, easy alternative to deploying your existing staff members. Rather than wasting time or pulling your engineering team away from more important tasks, you can have an MSP do all the preparatory and assessment work for you.
When Shouldn't You Engage a Managed Service Provider?
When you need a quick fix for your problem.
MSPs aren't designed to operate as a quick fix for capacity issues or poor design. MSPs augment your existing infrastructure by improving upon and streamlining your routine maintenance tasks; they aren't intended to compensate for inherent problems within your IT structure. (Those will need to be directly addressed.)
The relationship between an organization and an MSP is intended to be long-term in order to be truly valuable.
When there are no clearly defined roles for problem resolution.
If the managed service provider cannot easily fit into an existing and clear problem resolution hierarchy, it will not be able to operate effectively. The MSP needs to fit into a system that is coherent but in need of a few additional capable hands to tackle the basics.
An MSP works best with clearly defined roles.
So, should you engage a managed service provider? The best way to find out is to discuss your needs directly with an MSP and to see where they can fit into your existing architecture. An MSP is a versatile solution to a variety of problems, but there does need to be a clear role to fill before they can begin helping your organization.
