Managed IT Support – is it going to break the bank?
Truthfully, it depends on your current situation. Generally Managed Service Providers (MSP’s) are drastically less expensive than your own in house IT department, but no two situations are ever exactly the same.
As a decision maker, IT Support costs can be high on the list of variables that are considered (and why we suggest including an IT Plan into your yearly budget and planning process) when making IT decisions but shouldn’t be looked at as the end all be all. You really need to look at the value of IT Support that you’re getting from any technical team, provider or hybrid solution to make a good decision.
Let’s take a look at some specific examples:
1. In-house IT vs. Managed IT support
Managed IT Support will generally give you a more proactive approach, with fast response times versus an onsite team that will provide more hands on support. We’ve encountered this scenario many times and without naming names I’ll walk through one of our client’s experience with us. When we began working with them they had a full time CIO, a full time IT support position and a part time applications support position. The CIO was costing them approximately $100k/year, the IT support position salary was $45k/year and the part time applications support position was about $25k. This brings the cost of their IT support team to $170k/year before benefits and other HR associated costs which is about 15% or $25,500/year which brings you to a grand total of $195,500.00/year for their own IT support team.
We were able to deliver this company a full IT Support team including a Virtual CIO, all-inclusive and unlimited support, less problems with proactive management, Anti-Virus and Malware tools for all systems, monitoring and reporting on their complete environment all for less than $50,000.00/year with fully Managed IT Support. (This is an actual client that we still work with today.)
2. Hybrid scenario to straight in house
This newer solution is becoming more common and delivers benefits of some onsite IT staff combined with the expertise of a MSP. In this case you will generally end up with lower prices (but not always!) and you will get more comprehensive and typically faster support. Let’s take another look at the scenario above where their IT support costs total out at $195,500/year for their own IT support team of 2 and ½ (CIO, IT Support position, ½ time application support) compared to a hybrid solution.
The MSP portion to manage the environment would not change so it would be $50,000.00/year plus the onsite person which would have the skillset of Application support and have the capability to communicate well with the MSP staff. This employee’s salary would be about $50k/year + 15% for HR costs which brings you to a grand total of $107,500.00/year for the hybrid IT Support solution of an IT staffer plus a MSP.
3. Leaving one MSP and moving to another.
Packages and Pricing that Managed IT Support Providers offer differ greatly from company to company. The best companies generally have a little higher pricing and what you get for that price is a much better value, but not always. The Managed IT Support model has gotten much more popular in the last couple years and we see more and more non-technical companies getting into the business. So, first thing is to find an IT support company that has a background in implementing and managing computer technology and supporting computer users. Then you will have to sort through vendors pricing schedules to make a decision. IT Support providers that really know what they’re doing tend to have a simple pricing structure.
Take for example when we moved a 70 employee company over to Envision IT support and in the process it was revealed that our price was just about half of what the company had been spending. They had 70 employees, 6 servers and 1 location and had been spending nearly $10,000.00/mo on their old MSP for limited support of their technical environment. We were able to come in and provide unlimited support with quicker response times as well as everything else they were getting for just over $5,000.00/mo with Envision IT Partners EncompassIT support package.
The answer still remains that the cost of your IT, whether managed or in house, still ultimately depends on your technology situation. As you can see, however, working with the right Managed IT Support company can offer benefits in cost, overall support and even assistance to your current in-house team – just make sure to do your research!
Questions or comments about what you’ve read? Let us know!
