Outsourcing your IT support is an excellent way to make your small business more productive and efficient. Today, SMBs spend about 7.8 percent of their total IT budgets on outsourced services. This represents a significant increase over the past few years. Here are five of the strategic advantages of outsourced IT support that will make your business into a lean, mean and efficient machine.

Lower IT costs

Your outsourced IT support should be able to control the technology costs your business incurs. This is arguably their most important strategic advantage. By transferring your IT support to an MSP, you can save yourself money on salaries and training for in-house support staff. Additionally, in-house staff may not always have a consistent amount of work to attend to. If your service agreement extends to hardware assets, you may also be able to save yourself the considerable cost of owning and maintaining in-house server infrastructure. The savings from lower IT costs will also free up capital for uses that produce a greater return on investment.

Increased levels of uptime

A single minute of unplanned downtime can cost an SMB over $400. With offerings such as cloud services and managed data backups, outsourcing your IT support can ensure higher levels of uptime for your business. In addition to the loss of revenue it causes, downtime can also harm your reputation and negatively impact your customers. As a result, the higher levels of uptime that come with outsourced IT support can represent a major strategic advantage in both the short- and long-term.

More room for employees to focus on core tasks

Typically, SMBs have a limited number of employees covering all of the necessary tasks of running a business. Outsourced IT is a great way for smaller companies to use their human resources more effectively. By putting the everyday work of maintaining IT assets in the hands of a managed services provider (MSP), you can free up your employees to focus on sales, marketing and product development. Keep in mind that this same principle can apply not only to IT but also to any resource-intensive task that isn’t directly related to your core business model.

Faster problem resolution

When issues arise in your IT systems, it’s important to get them resolved as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that can be a problem if your small in-house IT team only works certain hours of the day or certain days of the week. With 24/7 availability, a third-party service provider can resolve IT problems quickly and efficiently, even when your employees aren’t in the office.

Encouraging growth for startups

Although the advantages of outsourced IT support can apply to almost any SMB, they can be especially pronounced for newer startups. In addition to saving money on their IT support, new businesses can save the considerable amounts of time it would take to put an in-house IT team together. As a result, startups that outsource their IT tasks can put more of their time and resources into driving initial growth.

As you can see, the advantages of outsourcing your company’s IT support can be far-reaching. From keeping your IT budget in check to promoting customer satisfaction with high levels of uptime, outsourced support services can help your business stay lean and efficient without compromising on quality.