You Don’t Have to Manage IT Alone – How Managed Services Can Take the Stress Off Your Tech
In today’s world, Managed IT Services for organizations is gaining traction. Gone are the 90’s stereotypes of the Break/Fix IT method, and in is re-emerging Managed Services as a solution. For organizations looking to stay ahead of the curve, maintaining, researching, and adopting technology solutions can be a heavy lift, particularly for smaller nonprofits without a dedicated IT Manager or team. The idea of outsourcing IT services is enough for any nonprofit to want to jump at the opportunity, however, many still are unsure or unaware of the true benefits, or wondering why they truly can’t do it alone – do the benefits really outweigh the costs? Let’s dive deeper into what managed IT can do for organizations.
What Are Managed Services?
Managed IT Services are tasks related to IT that are outsourced to a third party responsible for ensuring that an organization’s IT systems run smoothly and efficiently. Things like:
- Help Desk Support – limited, or unlimited, access to a team of IT Support Specialists that work with all users on your staff to resolve tech issues. Think password resets, upgrading software, locked out accounts, and syncing problems.
- Monitoring and Patch Management – full management of network and IT systems, critical security and system patches to all workstations and servers.
- Inventory, Licensing and Procurement Control - reports that include all hardware and software connected to your tech environment with details including age, renewal times, costs, and documentation to keep systems current and up to date.
- Anti-virus and Antispyware Protection – deployed and managed to all devices through a remote agent.
- Account Management and Strategic Planning – dedicated experts to review goals, needs, and challenges to see where technology investment and budgeting may be beneficial.
Knowing IT is secure and running efficiently helps organizations focus more on the important work they are doing to support their mission.
Why Nonprofits Are Turning to Managed Services
Not only does IT management take time, expertise, and money; it’s something every organization needs to be on top of but is also costly to have a full in-house IT staff. Some organizations are known to rely on “Accidental Techies”, or the staff member with the most IT knowledge, but that can have profound effects on when a problem occurs. With Managed IT services, nonprofits can
- Lower Overall IT Costs: A reoccurring, standard monthly fee makes budgeting simpler and costs easier to plan. Managed Services Providers (MSPs) typically charge based on how many devices you want managed including workstations, servers, and networks. Additional complexities or add-ons, like extra security tools, compliance needs, or multi-location offices, may be added and should be discussed during your initial calls. If your MSP also includes a dedicated Account Manager, their expertise can also support building budgets and planning ahead for technology upgrades.
- Wide-Ranging Expertise: Most reputable MSPs have multiple technicians with different expertise on their teams, including cybersecurity experts, software implementation experts, database experts, etc. If you get hit with a ransomware attack, you should be able to rely on your MSP’s security team to assist. Or, if your network is down, your MSP’s network technicians can step in to help.
- Tech Standardization: One of the first things an MSP will do is an onboarding audit, where they will list out and report on as many workstations, devices, and software they can identify. By curating this report, Account Managers can typically find duplicative software, unused licenses, and more. By streamlining software and device use across your team, you can cut costs and make resolving issues easier with standard equipment and tools.
- Extra Monitoring and Training: We all know that users are the #1 security risk for organizations. MSPs, particularly ones familiar with supporting nonprofit organizations, can help providing security training for staff, deploy simulated phishing attacks to test and train users, and help implement tools like Multi-factor Authentication and SSO to help secure critical data systems.
Choosing the Right Managed Services Provider
If your organization has decided to move forward with Managed IT Services, now is the time to find the right MSP for your organization and its needs. This can be a daunting task for many, especially those who lack experience or expertise in IT. When choosing the right MSP, it’s important to look out for these key things:
- Evaluate Their Experience – Look for MSPs that are familiar with the nonprofit sector, which has unique needs and challenges that differ from most for-profit companies. A savvy MSP will be able to share nonprofit discounts for licenses, software, and tools to ensure you are getting the best deal and will be following trends in nonprofit-specific tools like fundraising software, volunteer management, and compliance needs.
- Consider Their Service Offerings – Whether it’s network monitoring, extra cybersecurity, or technical support, MSPs offer a variety of services - finding one that offers support in the areas that align with your needs is crucial. Don’t overpay for a package of services you don’t need but also don’t pick the lowest cost service if it doesn’t include critical support like anti-virus or Help Desk support.
- Ask For Reviews: It never hurts to ask for references, particularly from clients that may match your size, needs, or complexity. This can help you feel more comfortable with their expertise, customer service, and ticket answering time.
What Makes Tech Impact Unique
With potentially hundreds of MSPs to comb through, we’d be remiss not to share what makes Tech Impact different from the rest. Along with having more than eight key elements included in our Managed IT solution, we exclusively support nonprofits, because we are a nonprofit ourselves. This positions us to be leaders in understanding the complexities around nonprofit technology, because we have experienced them ourselves.
Tech Impact supports over 350 organizations across the country each month which means over 9,000 nonprofit staff members have access to our Help Desk every day. Along with our Managed IT services, our team of over 100 staff include experts in Microsoft’s 365 platform, Google Workspace, cybersecurity prevention and monitoring, software like Salesforce, Power Platform, Drupal, innovative platforms including AI, automations, dashboards, and more.
Our team is here to offer solutions that best fit your organization’s needs so you can worry about the important work – your mission. Reach out to us today to get started on Managed IT services.
