Filling the role of IT Manager can be a major pain. Today’s IT leaders are expected to accomplish more while working with less, plus their IT team must juggle keeping an entire business’s daily operations afloat while accomplishing the strategic initiatives that demonstrate the team’s value to the company. It can be exhausting to deal with the daily nuances of an IT leadership role, but we have a remedy—read on to find out how outsourcing to a Managed Services provider can solve some of your biggest headaches.
Problem 1: “It’s hard to find the right IT talent”
As the saying goes, good talent is hard to come by. According to an article by LinkedIn, the talent shortage is real in the IT industry, and the digital skills gap is only going to widen in the future. The article reports that by 2020 the technology industry may be short more than 1.1 million skilled workers globally. There just aren’t enough candidates with the right skills, training and technical abilities to fill all the open roles, and the candidates that do fit your needs are snatched up quickly.
If you are lucky enough to have that talent on your IT team, you don’t want to waste their abilities on minimal tasks and maintenance issues. Not only that but IT departments today are expected to do more with fewer resources. Many IT leaders experience the pressure to reduce company costs by downsizing their team, even as their list of responsibilities may grow. No one should have to waste valuable time and resources on repetitive tasks, especially with a small team.
Solution: With the support of a Managed Services team on your side, you don’t need to hire extra IT talent to manage your IT infrastructure. You can rely on a team of certified professionals from a Managed Services Provider (MSP) who are experienced in working with technical environments day in and day out—it’s their main job, so you don’t have to worry about filling that talent gap.
Problem 2: “Upkeep and maintenance is taking up too much of my time”
Whether you have limited IT resources or not, keeping up with the day-to-day operations of your infrastructure consumes valuable time and resources that need to be focused on strategic IT goals and initiatives. In the time you are taking to make repairs and updates, your focus is shifted away from monitoring for threats and performance issues, allowing more issues—and work—to quickly add up for you. This is obviously inefficient and amounts to a major lack of time leftover for any project work or core service enhancements.
Solution: An MSP’s team of professionals manages the day-to-day operation of your constantly evolving IT infrastructure so that you can focus on completing your projects and accomplishing your strategic goals. The MSP proactively monitors your systems to automatically detect threats, performance issues, and network and system problems. The threats are detected and remediated in real-time before they can become a major issue and another pressing item on your schedule.
Systems management, managed hosting and storage, managed network, and managed support are just a few of IMS Solutions Group’s offerings that assist with the ongoing management of your data and equipment. Our team can also take care of the backups, patches, and software installs that dictate your schedule and distract you from important project work.
Problem 3: “It’s difficult to communicate the value of our IT strategy to non-IT”
If your company’s decision-makers don’t exactly understand IT, it can be a challenge to communicate your team’s accomplishments, goals, and budgetary needs. You need to be able to articulate to them the organization’s current state of IT as well as prove what your team has done to get those results and what you’ll need to meet future IT goals. If leadership doesn’t have a clear understanding of what you’re doing to support the business as a whole, it can lead to miscommunication and missed opportunities.
Solution: By utilizing an MSP, you are allocating your team’s valuable time and resources to be spent on functions that support the business. This demonstrates value right off the bat. Not to mention, some MSPs provide reporting that helps you clearly communicate to your leadership team what the current state of IT is, showing how the MSP has helped you improve and what you will need to budget for in the future. IMS Solutions Group’s services include reporting that gives you granular visibility into each managed asset, showing up to date metrics on the management, maintenance, and support of each device.
Managing your IT infrastructure doesn’t have to be difficult or totally consuming of your schedule. Whether you need to totally outsource your IT or just need some support behind your IT team, implementing Managed Services will help your IT department run more efficiently and accomplish the strategic initiatives that back the success of your business. To learn more about what Managed Services can help your team accomplish, schedule a Managed Service Consultation with our experts.
About IMS Solutions Group’s Managed IT Services
As the preferred local MSP company, IMS Solutions Group offers a full suite of managed IT services to companies across the Carolinas and the Midwest United States. Whether you contract with us to work as an extension of your IT department or handle your full IT services if no internal resources exist, IMS Solutions Group handles the day-to-day so you can focus on running your business. See the full line-up of managed services—including specialties in Strategic Guidance, Security, Microsoft Solutions, End User Management, Infrastructure Management, Service Desk, and Business Continuity—or request a free managed services consultation today to see how we can help your company!
