Working with an IT provider can provide your organization with all the resources of a fully staffed IT department without the stress of hiring, maintaining, and time to hire in-house. If you are a small business that utilizes cloud software, in-house servers, or computer equipment, you likely need a professional to maintain that equipment.
It isn’t just “Set it and forget it.” While a lot of companies do want to call an IT provider when something is wrong, this can end up costing your organization in downtime and repairs. There is ongoing maintenance that needs to happen, including making sure that your backups are running, your workstations aren’t flagged for viruses or malware, you don’t have any unauthorized logins to your environment, and others.
All of these are examples of a few things that we are set to get alerts on with our clients. As soon as something is found to be off in the environment, we will get an alert on it at once, and our engineers will begin triaging the ticket to see what’s going on and issue a fix if necessary.
Here are the top 10 benefits you’ll get from working with an IT provider:
Benefit #1: We take on the challenging work of managing your IT infrastructure
Managing your IT infrastructure is not something anyone can do. It requires years of training and experience to understand and triage what equipment requires upgrades, what the implications of that upgrade are (if any), and how to best tackle the upgrade process.
This requires time-consuming tasks, such as reviewing the release notes for any changes, reviewing past upgrades for potential issues, and planning the upgrade process moving forward.
In addition to managing the equipment to ensure that it’s upgraded to the latest version, we also review the equipment in the environment to make sure there is something called a “heart-beat.” If it goes down, there is a critical alert that our system generates so that we can get someone on the alert before you even realize the outage.
Benefit #2: We partner with you to align your goals and initiatives with your IT direction
Do you ever feel confused or overwhelmed with all the new software that’s coming out these days? It seems like everywhere you turn you can find different software to do the same thing you’re doing with another piece of software. Companies without a solid IT direction or leadership will often have employees signing up for different “solutions.” These organizations struggle with a cohesive direction for sharing files, collaborating, and often have security holes because their environment and data may be sitting on different software vendors’ servers.
Part of our job is to meet with you regularly in a “Technology Business Review (TBR).” In these we’ll talk to you about your troubles, your future plans, as well as the direction you would like to take the organization. All of these will be used to determine where the organization plans to go and how they plan to get there from a software solution perspective.
Benefit #3: More time to focus on what’s needed to keep your organization moving forward
Running an organization is all about delegation. It’s no surprise that technology management and IT support take a lot of time and resources. If you’re looking for ways to save yourself some time, then outsourcing your technology department rather than handling it all yourself is a great way to save some time and, as a result, money. If someone comes to you with a technology concern, you can bring it to us and we’ll work together to find the solution that works for the organization.
Benefit #4: Peace of mind with your technology
Not knowing whether you’re doing the right thing or what’s recommended is a lonely place to be. It helps to have a trusted advisor that you can work with to address any of your concerns or questions. That’s where EIS comes in. Our team will work with your team to make sure any concerns are addressed.
We have both monthly and quarterly check-ins to make sure that we’re both on the same page and that your concerns are being addressed.
Benefit #5: Predictable costs
You may have heard the term “managed service provider (MSP)” during your research into technology companies. These are specialized types of companies that work with you on a contract monthly basis and can have different packages, ranging from monitoring only up to full help desk, monitoring, and an advanced security stack. You pay a monthly fee to use the services, and this takes the guesswork out of budgeting for the upcoming year.
With our team you’ll be able to determine the yearly budget for technology expenditures for things ranging from computer and server replacements up to and including full software technology endeavors.
Benefit #6: Improve your security posture
Our team has a security-first mindset. We are constantly evaluating the risk for things in the environment and making plans to increase the security protections your organization has. It’s an ever-evolving landscape, so staying up to date on the latest vulnerabilities is important for protecting yourself and the organization from attacks.
Everyone is at risk from a cyber incident. It’s important to mitigate your risk as much as possible.
Benefit #7: Improve your technology vendor management
We’ll work with your software vendors on your behalf to work through outages and difficulties. Often, it’s extremely helpful to have a team who understands all of the acronyms and the verbiage that is used in this industry. We work with the technology vendors so that we can ensure a timely fix if it’s an outage or a smooth transition if it’s a new rollout.
Benefit #8: One main contact for all your technology
We’ll maintain a list of your software vendors, your deployed hardware, server equipment and network equipment. That way, if anything goes wrong, you can reach out to us and we’ll work on your behalf.
Benefit #9: Access to expertise when you need it the most
With outsourced IT services you get access to a range of different subject matter experts and have a team of people to work on finding resolutions to your problems, rather than having it fall on a single individual.
Benefit #10: Centralized management means supporting your remote teams is easier than ever
You’ll get access to a team with the full capability to support your remote staff with ease. We are fully equipped and able to manage a remote team wherever they work (as long as there is an internet connection.)
EIS Is Your Go-To IT Provider in the Bay Area If you’re looking to see if working with an IT support provider can be beneficial for you and your organization, please reach out to us!