In today's fast-paced business environment, having a reliable and efficient IT support system is crucial for the ...
In today's fast-paced business environment, having a reliable and efficient IT support system is crucial for the success of any organization. Co-Managed IT Support is a model that combines in-house IT resources with the support of an MSP, like us, to create a collaborative and cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. In this blog post, we will explore what Co-Managed IT Support entails and how it can benefit your company.
Managing the resources of your company is not always easy, especially for SMBs and SMEs. You only have so much money to spend. Plus, with IT costs - from the hardware to employee's salaries - you need to make sure you are budgeting and allocating your money appropriately.
As a Managed IT Service Provider, Cloud Cover is very familiar with the balancing act of the budgeting while investing money into the IT infrastructure. We understand your struggles - because it's our struggle too. We are a small business that needs to invest in our tools, our people and our growth.
And this balancing act is where co-managed IT steps in and can help your organization.
Let's look at the questions we hear most commonly about co-managed IT:
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What is co-managed IT?
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What are the services you provide with co-managed IT?
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What business models work best with co-managed IT?
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What are some of the benefits of co-managed IT support?
What is Co-Managed IT Support?
Co-Managed IT Support, is a partnership between an organization's internal IT team and a Managed Service Provider or MSP. This model allows companies to leverage the expertise and resources of both parties to enhance their IT capabilities and support their business operations effectively.
In a Co-Managed IT Support setup, the internal IT team retains control over strategic IT decisions and day-to-day operations, while the MSP offers additional support, expertise, and resources as needed. This collaboration ensures that the organization has access to a wide range of IT services, including help desk support, network monitoring, cybersecurity, cloud services, and more, without the need to hire additional in-house staff.
What are the services we provide with co-managed IT support?
Well, it depends. Co-managed IT involves the collaboration between your current IT department and your MSP. Therefore, each co-managed IT contract will look different for each business. We work with some businesses that need a lot of support, including weekly all day on site support and we work with other organizations that only use our tools, deployment packages and cybersecurity software.
The best way to start to figure out the co-managed IT services you need is to see where your current IT team could use the most help.
Is your staff having difficulty maintaining your network's cybersecurity? Do they have the tools or experience to implement software to improve office efficiency? Or are they struggling to support an increasing number of remote employees? Do you have projects that need managed and implemented that you could use help with?
Once you've made a list of services needed, you can then talk with a MSP to get an appropriate list of services and a quote.
Some standard services provided by co-managed IT service providers are:
- Support in day-to-day tasks (such as troubleshooting, functioning as the help-desk for employees, upgrading software, backing up & protecting data)
- Supplementary or fully cybersecurity services
- Server maintenance
- Line of business application upgrades
- Cloud technologies
- IT compliance
- Support in a rapidly expanding business
- Provides tools to improve the efficiency of your IT team
- Managing remote locations and employees
- Escalation point for your IT technicians
Co-managed IT works best as a long-term partnership with your in-house IT team. And despite the flexibility of services, co-managed IT is meant for a specific set of businesses.
What businesses benefit from co-managed IT support?
There are specific businesses that will do great within a co-managed IT setup. Other companies are better off having their own fully staffed IT departments or a fully managed services package.
So, how will you know if you need co-managed IT?
The businesses which benefit the most from co-managed IT have the following qualities:
You want to have both in-house IT staff and the support of third party IT experts.
Keeping your IT staff can be non-negotiable for many reasons. Maybe they're essential to your company or provide unique and valuable insight to the department. Or perhaps you like the ease of having someone on-site all the time to provide fast and reliable support at all times.
Co-managed IT allows you to keep your staff while bringing in new people. These new people can help provide new perspectives or strategies your current IT department may not have.
So through co-managed IT, you get the best of both worlds.
You need someone on staff to help manage your IT resources. We work with a few organizations that only have an IT managed or and IT director. They manage not only their IT resources, they manage us. They hired us, they have weekly status meetings with us, they work one on one with us on projects. They manage their line of business software vendors. In general, these companies are large enough to have the budget to hire someone in that level of position but just not large enough to have a fully staffed IT department.
You have specialized needs such as compliance or advanced cybersecurity needs.
The needs of your business may be beyond the current abilities of your IT staff. Instead of putting resources into hiring new people, you can choose to get co-managed IT instead.
Your company is growing rapidly, but you can't hire at the rate you are growing.
We all know the challenges of finding and hiring top tier talent in the current landscape. Hiring in the tech field is much more complicated than it sounds. As of 2023, the unemployment rate was 2.2% in the information technology field! Plus, after you find them, you need to train them, then retain them.
There are only so many hardworking, qualified employees out there. You may want to invest your company's resources into immediately getting IT support instead of finding new people.
What are the benefits of co-managed IT support?
1. Enhanced Expertise: By partnering with a MSP, companies can tap into a pool of highly skilled professionals with specialized expertise in various IT areas. This can help improve the overall efficiency and performance of the organization's IT systems.
2. Cost-Effective Solution: Co-Managed IT Support allows businesses to access enterprise level IT services without the high costs associated with hiring and training a fully staffed in-house IT department. This model offers a flexible and scalable solution that can adapt to the organization's changing IT needs.
3. Increased Security: With the rise of cyber threats and data breaches, having robust cybersecurity measures in place is essential for any business. Co-Managed IT Support providers can help strengthen the organization's security posture by implementing the latest security technologies and best practices.
4. Improved IT Performance: By combining the strengths of both internal and external IT teams, companies can achieve higher levels of IT performance and reliability. Co-Managed IT Support providers can help optimize IT processes, streamline workflows, and resolve IT issues promptly to minimize downtime.
5. Scalability and Flexibility: Co-Managed IT Support is a flexible solution that can scale according to the organization's needs. Whether the company is experiencing rapid growth or needs additional IT support during peak periods, the external IT service provider can adapt to meet these requirements.
In conclusion, Co-Managed IT Support offers a collaborative and efficient approach to managing an organization's IT infrastructure. By leveraging the expertise and resources of both internal and external IT teams, businesses can enhance their IT capabilities, improve security, and drive overall business success. We'll meet with you and your IT team to find a plan and relationship that works well with your team and future technology goals. We want to know what you need and what you have covered. What are the things your IT team wants to stop doing, what are the things they need more help with? Are there projects ahead that need planned out? Would your team benefit by using our tools? Our ticketing system, our backups, our deployments, security and automation tools? You tell us how we would best fit in with your organization.