Business Leader's Guide to Co-Managed IT Support

Here are five warning signs that your IT team may be underwater.

Your IT leaders and staff are routinely working nights and weekends to catch up. Ultimately, this will lead to exhaustion and burnout – which means expensive and disruptive turnover.

Projects are not being completed on time or correctly. Don’t jump to the conclusion that you have the “wrong people” in place. It’s highly likely you have smart, dedicated people – they’re just pushed to the limits.

Vacation and sick time have become an inside joke. More times than not, we hear from dedicated IT staff that they feel it is impossible to take time off. They are very much aware they are responsible for the safety and stability of the entire company network.

There has been no time to roll out preventative maintenance and proactive security measures. Often the first things to fall off the plate are the most important. When projects are backing up and there are multiple fires to put out, its hard to get ahead of server maintenance, patching, security awareness training, testing backup plans, documenting disaster recovery…and other routine but critical tasks.

No one on the team is a cybersecurity expert. The complexity of how to protect an organization against cyber crime along with compliance with new data privacy laws is growing exponentially. This requires specialized knowledge, expertise and systems with constant monitoring and attention. You cannot afford to skimp in this area!

Here are 5 reasons why CEOs, CFOs and CIOs are moving to a co-managed IT approach.

Employee retention. We do not replace your staff, we make them better. By filling gaps, giving them access to best-in-class tools and freeing them up to do their best work, they become FAR more productive for you – and less likely to leave.

Cost efficiencies. We don’t have to tell you how hard it is to find, hire and retain top IT talent. With co-managed IT, you don’t have to take on the cost, overhead and risk of a huge IT department. We never take vacations or sick leave – you will NEVER be left short-staffed.

Reduced risk. We offer 24/7 cyber security services, including tools and services that are far beyond the reach of the average business. Our team of cyber experts work with your team to provide the proactive, round the clock protection that is crucial on today’s environment.

Access to expertise. No one IT person can know it all or do it all. Because you are a co-managed IT client, your team will have access to a deep bench of expertise to get advice and to help decide which technologies are best for your company.

Access to automation tools. These are tools that most could not reasonably afford to bring in-house, but that can help your team prioritize and resolve employee problems faster and in general, make your IT department far more effective and efficient.

When your IT lead views us an adversary, not an ally. It happens. We are not looking to remove resources, we are looking to add value to existing resources. Still, some IT managers are fearful and have been know to sabotage the relationship.

When there are no in-house IT resources at all. There needs to be an IT -savvy leader in the company who we can collaborate with, and who knows how the company operates, all the critical applications and is technically astute. If you do not have this, you need to consider a 100% outsourced Managed IT Services model.

When the IT lead or team are fearful of change. Our primary goal is to support you and your preferences. However, one of our big values is our depth of experience. Clients that get the best results are the ones that are open to new ideas and can keep an open mind.

When the leadership team is unwilling to invest in IT. We get it – everyone has to watch costs. However, starving the IT department is very risky. Some C-levels may question the expense of co-managed IT, and think they might be better offering hiring a full time resource. However, they forget that they are getting more than just a single person - they are getting an entire team, specialized skills and access to software and tools.

"Patching, help desk, and even things like cloudbased Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) are good candidates for outsourcing to a managed service. Once those workloads are shifted from your internal IT, you can start focusing on more strategic initiatives."

– Brian Shea, Chief Information Officer, MBX Medical Billing Experts

"There’s no way a company of 200 employees or smaller is going to develop subject matter expertise in the full range of technology enablement they need."

– Kirk McLaren, CEO of Foresight CFO

"The MSP leverages its resources to bring additional value when fulfilling your IT requirements. When the relationship works, clients benefit from their service provider’s mature infrastructure and extensibility."

– Mark Drever, President & CEO, Xcelerate Solutions

"Outsource IT needs that require specialized knowledge and attention. Other services that can be purchased cost-effectively from a massively scaled vendor – such as cloud data storage – are also good candidates for outsourcing."

– Stephanie Jones, COO, Alpa Diagnostics