When it comes to strategies for growing your business, hiring an IT managed services firm might not be the first thing to come to mind. More typically, companies outsource their technology needs to an IT managed services firm because they lack the resources to manage the technology in house, or they are experiencing some technical difficulties that need to be resolved.
But if you haven’t considered IT managed services as an integral part of your growth strategy, maybe you should. Here’s why.
IT managed services increases your technical capacity
There are many things that can keep a company from growing, but one of the most critical has to do with capacity. Your software can only accommodate so many employees or “seats.” Your servers can only handle so much traffic. Your databases only have so much space. Your IT staff or office manager can only handle so many demands to respond to problems.
What often holds companies back from growing once they reach these capacity thresholds is that the initial investment to purchase the needed infrastructure, or to hire the needed staff, is more than your company can handle at once. Another concern may be that if you expand capacity – or scale – to accommodate growth, but that growth doesn’t happen or if the economic situation changes, you will then have more capacity than you need. But if you try to make do with current technology, growth stagnates.
When you hire an IT managed services firm to increase your technical capacity, you get the ability to scale to accommodate growth, now and in the future, with limited upfront investment. You pay monthly just for the capacity you need, and if things change, you can scale up or down as your business needs demand.
IT managed services turns human and capital costs into operating costs
On a similar note, there are several types of investments that companies can make to support growth. One is a capital cost – these are large scale, long term investments that your company needs to make to support growth. They could include physical space, technology infrastructure, etc. Another is human cost – the cost of hiring more workers. And a third is operating cost – the monthly cost of doing business.
To grow, companies usually need to make one of these kinds of investments. Of the three, operating costs are the most flexible – operating costs can easily change from month to month, whereas human costs are burdened by the cost of hiring workers, providing benefits, etc. Capital costs are the least flexible as they require a large upfront commitment with no way to reverse course once the decisions are made and infrastructure is purchased.
So, for these two reasons, IT managed services is a great way for companies to support growth by scaling their technical capacity, without making large capital or human resource investments.
