Save Money and Improve Efficiency with Managed IT Services

Life is getting expensive. It’s an uncertain time for both businesses and individuals alike. UK inflation is rising at the fastest rate in 40 years, while the value of the British pound has dropped to a record low. The cost of energy and other resources has soared and we’re about to dip into a recession. It’s no wonder we’re all looking for ways to save money.

Businesses are under increasing pressure to safeguard and retain their staff while maintaining growth and performance. So how can you reduce costs in a time when the price of everything is going up? And is there a way to save money and improve efficiency? Yes, and yes – by working with a Managed Service Provider (MSP).

How Can an MSP Help You Reduce Costs?

Managed Service Providers no longer just offer simple break/fix packages. Nowadays, your MSP should work with you as your IT partner to help you achieve IT goals and improve outcomes. They can enable you to lower the cost of managing IT systems, find ways to improve efficiency, gain greater control over your IT budget and more. No wonder 65% of midsized businesses and nearly 3 out of 4 large firms utilise an MSP.

Read on to find out how a Managed Service Provider can help you save money.

Improve efficiency and processes

An efficient workplace is a more cost-effective workplace. When your critical IT systems are performing as they should, productivity rises. An MSP will provide the ongoing maintenance and support to ensure your entire IT landscape is quick and reliable, enabling employees to work without interruption. This helps people get more done, with less downtime.

They can also help you implement changes that enhance efficiency. Your IT partner should be able to provide you with new ways to streamline and automate processes that don’t just save time, but save money too. They can also provide advice on integrating systems and consolidating services to reduce costs and maximise value.

Minimise downtime

Downtime causes both direct and indirect costs to rise. When you prevent IT downtime, you save money. As technology facilitates most modern business processes, when core systems or applications fail or crash, your business loses the ability to operate, transact, connect with customers and deliver services. This can result in missed opportunities and a huge loss of revenue that only grows as each hour passes. In fact, ITIC’s Hourly Cost of Downtime Survey saw 90% of businesses report that 60 minutes of downtime to a critical server typically costs between $10,000 and $10,000,000.

Indirect costs which are more difficult to quantify in monetary value include the cost of interruption to productive work and connectivity that impact both employees and clients. Disruptions and loss of access prevents staff from getting stuff done – and the cost of this can spiral if downtime is a regular occurrence. Keeping downtime to a minimum is a simple way to reduce costs, and an MSP will have the tools and expertise to ensure that you can save money by preventing system failures and quickly resolving outages.

Access to better pricing

Managed Service Providers have direct partnerships with vendors that enable them to get better pricing due to partner agreements and order volumes – and they can pass these savings on to their customers. An MSP can help you access lower prices for a range of products and services, and even help you save money on your licenses.

MSPs will have software licensing experts who can use their knowledge to help you identify areas where you may be overspending or paying for more than you may need. Licensing is complex and one of the most common places where businesses overspend. Software Asset Management (SAM) services help you tame an out-of-control software landscape, so you can maximise the value of your IT spend, eliminate underutilised resources, and save money on your licenses.

At 848, we typically help clients reduce costs surrounding software by 25% through SAM. If you’re not sure if you’re paying too much for your cloud services, a Software License Review is a great place to start to see if you could save money.

Affordable expertise and resources

Most businesses with over 50 employees will have at least one or two people inhouse looking after day-to-day IT tasks. But as technology and business requirements change so quickly, how can just a couple staff have the time and expertise to manage every aspect of your IT and security landscape? For many, important changes and projects that could save you money can often fall to the wayside as everyday IT management and support is so time-consuming.

While extending your internal department may be your ideal, recruitment costs are high, and paying the salaries of a larger and more specialised team is not always feasible. Beyond just the costs involved, IT skills are some of the highest in demand, with the UK experiencing an ongoing tech skills shortage. This means even if money wasn’t an issue, finding and filling vacancies is a challenge in itself.

Working with an MSP enables you build a bigger IT team without a recruiting additional IT resource. It can also provide you with a helping hand when a full-time staff member isn’t required. You get access to complete team of tech specialists at a far more affordable price point.

Many of our clients have internal IT staff and use our team to fill skills gaps and access leading tools and software at a lower cost. We can pick up daily IT support and management so your team can focus on more meaningful projects, or deliver upgrades and transformations on your behalf. With years of experience and expertise in ITIL frameworks, our team can help you implement changes that improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Prevent unexpected costs

IT problems are never totally unavoidable. Incidents arise – it’s how they are dealt with that’s important. When you work with an MSP, you can reduce downtime and impact of an IT issues. This helps you save money and maintain a productive landscape instead of wasting hours and resources firefighting issues.

Any time you run into a problem, instead of spending time and money on an unexpected and potentially costly fixes, your MSP can resolve it. There’s no additional price to pay, as you’ve already paid for your support in a single, simply monthly package. Continuous monitoring and maintenance can also help you reduce costs and disruption to operations by identifying issues quickly and addressing root cause to preventing them from happening again in the future.

Better business security

Poor security comes at a cost. A cyber-attack can be a major and unplanned expense. Breaches cost businesses of all sizes thousands of pounds every day, which is why investing in your security is the best way to save money in the long run.

The costs associated with recovering from an attack can cripple your business financially, or worse, cause you to shut down for good. A significant breach can also cause you to halt business temporarily, resulting in a lost sales and opportunities. The Works is a prime example of this, after recently experiencing a breach that hit headlines. Trading was disrupted and the retailer closed stores across the UK while it tried to resolve issues with tech systems.

While no IT Partner can ever guarantee a breach will never happen, an MSP can significantly reduce your chances of becoming a victim.

An experienced Managed Service team can proactively monitor your IT environment to identify and address threats before they can cause any harm. They can also provide security expertise and threat protection to prevent a breach from occurring in the first place. This will reduce the likelihood of your business experiencing the financial and reputational damage of an attack, helping you reduce costs long term.

Proactive maintenance

With larger teams, extended skillsets, and tried-and-tested processes, MSPs have a higher capacity to perform important regular maintenance tasks such as delivering system updates, upgrades, and patches. These help to ensure your IT environment is up-to-date and working as it should. It stops you from relying on dated software and processes.

Your internal IT team may struggle to find the time to handle routine maintenance, however being proactive is a simple way to save money. This is because it’s far more cost-effective to regularly update systems instead of reacting to issues caused by a lack of maintenance and out-of-date technologies.

Leading tech, as a service

As well as providing access to specialist expertise in areas such as cybersecurity and the cloud, your IT partner can make it easy for you to pay for and access leading technology at a far more affordable price point. Instead of traditional IT ownership, you can adopt cloud services, software, infrastructure and even hardware on a cost-effective as-a-service basis. We live in a time where nearly anything in tech can be bought as-a-service. From SaaS (Software as a Service) to NaaS (Network as a Service) to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and more. This subscription-style approach to IT procurement helps you save money when building a modern and secure IT landscape.

An MSP can make it easier to deploy new services and reduce costs. This is because they can handle the end-to-end IT lifecycle, including managing your licenses and configuring, deploying, and support your solutions. When an MSP deploys, licenses and manages your services, you can have peace of mind that you are getting the best deal and can access the expertise to get more out of your tech.

Save Money with an MSP

For more money saving tips or to see how the 848 Group can help you reduce costs when it comes to your IT, get in touch today. You can also find more advice on how to save money on your IT in our previous blog.

We’re an experienced cloud IT partner and MSP with a nationwide network of IT professionals. We have a team of Microsoft, ITIL, and Prince2 Certified experts specialising in all core IT areas including cloud apps and infrastructure, cybersecurity, ITSM, networking and more. 848 is here to support your business on its journey to cloud, to help you save money, improve IT outcomes, and enhance efficiency. We help your business achieve goals through IT, to reduce costs and deliver more value through technology.