As cited in CompTIA's 4th Annual Trends in Managed Services report, "the global managed-services market is predicted to grow to $193B by 2019, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 12.5%." What is fueling this impressive level of adoption? Why are so many business owners fans of your business model? We dug into the report to examine the top reasons small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) list for working with MSPs and IT solutions providers. As you build your 2016 sales strategy, pay attention to these main market drivers. Why SMB Owners Demand Managed Services When thinking about how best to position your managed IT services, it's worth considering what points make for the most compelling sell. Remember that while you may think they should adopt your business model for one reason, they may have an entirely different set of priorities that you should appeal to first. So what should you lead with when marketing and selling to prospective clients? Using data presented in CompTIA's report as reference, we break it down for you! How well do you deliver - and communicate that you deliver - each of the following? image source: https://www.comptia.org/resources/4th-annual-trends-in-managed-services Let's break the top five down: 1. Increased efficiency/reliability of IT operations As depicted in the chart above, 56 percent of companies with over a hundred employees list this as the main reason for working with a managed services provider (MSP). Indeed, it is the single most popular reason given. Often, the SMBs you aim to partner with have over-burdened IT staff with employees who may lack the skills and training for certain tasks or can't handle the whole of the company's network on their own. In response, these companies recognize the value of working with an outside technical support team. According to CompTIA's report, "60 percent of end users describe their managed services engagement as a collaborative arrangement with their internal IT department, suggesting that certain IT areas fall into the MSP bucket, while others remain in house." Notice how the reason provided is to improve the abilities of the in house team, not to do away with these IT employees altogether. Not only does it help having an extra team of IT experts able to troubleshoot and remediate issues that arise, clients benefit from having access to the latest technology and business-grade solutions that maintain uptime and profitability, such as remote monitoring and management (RMM), backup and disaster recovery (BDR) and cloud computing. Investing in these tools increases the reliability of organizations' IT infrastructure. Investing in the managed services business model tackles existing labor constraints and prevents internal IT departments from always having to play catch-up. 2. Enhanced security/compliance Laptops, desktops, smartphones, applications, tablets, servers, operating systems, browsers, wearable technology and the like all store and transmit data and thus require the strictest security measures. Prospective clients will turn to you out of fear of becoming the next headline in a high-profile data breach or data loss incident. Remind them of the most notorious examples highlighted in the media, and share the results and fallout. Are you offering compliance as a service? If you're trying to convince a doctor's office to consider you, begin by stressing the importance of working with a HIPAA compliant IT solutions provider, one who understands HIPAA regulations and how to supplement them with additional managed security protocol, policies and procedures. Reference the Anthem data breach, which implicated one-third of Americans and compromised the medical data of nearly 100 million individuals. As CompTIA's study finds, security and data protection resonates with your target audience. Along these lines, compliance is becoming even more of an outsourced IT adoption driver for SMB owners, especially with regard to PCI security standards, since many businesses offer e-commerce on their websites. 3. Proactive approach to maintenance This is a benefit of managed IT services that we discuss a lot because it is so important. Your clients don't want to have to think about their daily IT operations. They don't want to have to second-guess the reliability and speediness of their network connection. Similarly, they don't want to have to worry about what the state their IT environment will be when they commute in to work each morning. They choose to work with an MSP because you can provide 24/7/365 coverage. Services like RMM and the security suite you offer detect potential disturbances and vulnerabilities, allowing you to resolve these problems before they develop into more critical threats. When you offer fully managed IT support, you can often troubleshoot and remediate glitches or bugs before the client is any the wiser. Again, they're paying you to worry about these things for them. Does a CEO have the time to verify that the backups his company has taken actually worked? We already know that data management in the cloud is expected to yield more managed services revenue in 2016. In working with the right MSP, key executives can take advantage of proactive BDR solutions that offer business continuity by combining RMM intelligence with regular, encrypted backups, cloud computing capabilities and IT virtualization. 4. ROI/cost savings One of the biggest business values of managed services is greater cost savings, but it's one respondents have increasingly reported less, according to CompTIA findings. In fact, whereas in 2011, it was the number one factor in choosing managed services, only 30 percent of study participants maintain it's their top reason today. Perhaps MSPs have to do a better job of explaining how their IT services reduce costs and increase ROI. IT budgets consist of many items: hardware costs, software and network infrastructure costs and maintenance costs, to name a few. Recall how in point number one we state that MSPs can offer all the latest technology. This in turn smooths out the latter listed maintenance costs that accompany outdated hardware, which internal IT departments may not have the budget to upgrade. Don't forget about the expense of IT labor, which can be the most volatile over-time. Maybe the company you want to work with needs to reduce the size of its IT department because the cost of paying their current staff is far too high. It could also be the case that the company has no dedicated IT team and employees are forced to compensate by performing technical tasks that are outside of their core area of expertise, slowing productivity and preventing the business from being able to grow. With the managed services business model, customers are able to more easily predict their IT costs on a month-to-month basis. Clearly break the ROI of managed services down for them, and explain how freeing up more staff time to devote to higher value projects they're properly equipped to manage increases productivity overall. Then, be sure to review these cost savings in your quarterly business reviews (QBRs). These meetings will help you prove that your services are indeed valuable and will help clients understand the part you play in helping them reach their business goals. 5. Free IT staff to work on strategic projects Finally, an argument for managed services we've been hinting at all along - their IT employees can increase productivity by concentrating on those projects and assignments they're the best suited to tackle. As we've already established, the cost of labor is significant for any business, but especially for SMBs who rely on MSPs. As such, the business owners you appeal to will want to ensure that they are getting the most out of what they're paying for. It doesn't make sense to pay a full-time employee with little-to-no experience to migrate their on-premise Exchange servers to Microsoft Office 365 when they could outsource the same task to a technician with the appropriate level of skill and experience, at a fraction of the cost. Ask these prospects what their IT staff spends the majority of their day doing, and then ask what it is they're prevented from doing? Your managed services will help them maximize employee productivity and satisfaction. By partnering with an MSP with a help desk call center, for example, internal IT staff can free up time wasted recovering emails and resetting passwords and instead focus on strategic, revenue-generating objectives. The decision makers you sell to will appreciate that your business model helps them better utilize individuals' IT talents, increasing operational efficiency and decreasing employee turnover. Get managed services today. Managed Services is essential to businesses in South Africa. Having an award winning managed service provider like Multi IT & Telephony Solutions will enable your business to succeed and prosper in 2016. Contact us now for your customised managed service solution.

A solid data backup plan can help your company survive catastrophic data loss. Both cloud-based and traditional in-house solutions can be used to back up data. However, cloud-based solutions have several notable advantages. Here are four reasons to use a cloud-based data backup solution: 1. Cost To implement an in-house data backup solution, your company must purchase all the required infrastructure, including the physical storage. What's more, since these solutions come with broad tiers of storage space, you often end up paying for much more space than you actually need. With a cloud-based data backup solution, you don't need to purchase any infrastructure or pay for the IT staff's time to install and maintain it. Plus, you only pay for the storage space you actually use. 2. Scalability Sometimes companies need to significantly expand their data backup solution. It takes both time and money to scale an in-house data backup solution as new infrastructure will likely need to be purchased and installed. Cloud-based data backup solutions seamlessly scale along with your company's needs. This completely eliminates all the overhead involved in scaling your own infrastructure, and lets you focus on growing your business instead. 3. Reliability Cloud-based data backup service providers sign service level agreements, or SLAs, with their clients. These agreements clearly state the level of uptime, or amount of time that the data backup service is guaranteed to be available. Uptime levels range from 99.9% to 99.999%, where the level is typically referred to by the number of nines. So 99.9% is "3 nines" and 99.999% is "5 nines." Many service providers have redundant systems and contingency plans in place to ensure their level of uptime. If the uptime falls below a certain agreed-upon threshold, you may be entitled to a refund or service credits as per the SLA. 4. Disaster Recovery It's generally considered a best practice to move copies of in-house backups to an off-site location. Otherwise, you could permanently lose data if a fire destroys the server room, a tornado ravages the building, or another type of disaster occurs. No such considerations are necessary with cloud-based backup solutions. Providers must meet the contractual obligations within their SLA, typically replicating all backups to multiple data centers. This redundancy basically guarantees that your data is never lost. In addition, recovering data from from a cloud-based backup solution tends to be much easier than restoring your own in-house backups. As long as you have Internet access, you can restore your data with the click of a button. Your Cloud-based Data Backup Solution Multi IT & Telephony Solutions of cloud specialists and as such understand which aspects of the cloud will be most beneficial to you and your business. When considering your cloud-based data backup solution there are several factors to take into consideration. Knowing what, when and how to backup everything can mean the difference between business continuity and business failure. Contact Multi IT now and we will come to you and discuss everything and put together the right data backup solution for you and your business.

Dealing with IT suppliers and service providers is challenging for many businesses and many have concerns over reliability, security, cost as well as other factors. The key to hiring or dealing with a supplier is to do the research and leg work up front to ensure you know who you are dealing with, and the supplier you engage can service the needs of your business. Multi IT have put together 8 Critical IT Supplier Questions and some handy hints to help you make the best decision. To help guide you down the road to a successful and beneficial relationship we’ve put together some handy hints on what areas you should be thinking about and questions to ask suppliers when first engaging: 4 Handy Hints Treat the process like hiring a new staff member so invite the companies you are considering to an interview so you can get a feel for what working with them will be like. Have a look at their website and what presence they have online i.e. do they write for publications? Are they represented on industry bodies? See what other customers they have and in what industries, to ensure that they are supporting businesses similar to your own. Always check at least 3 references from past and present clients. Don’t take the suppliers word for it and ask for references for similar sized businesses in similar industries to your own. Evaluate the company not the sales rep. Don’t base your decision on how friendly or professional the sales rep is, instead compare the relevant factors, terms, cost, response times and customer references. 8 Critical IT Supplier Questions to ask: Do you have experience with businesses like mine? Do you understand my business and can you work with me to meet my unique needs? Are you flexible and scalable enough to cater for short-term peaks and long-term business needs? Do you offer proactive and responsive customer service in language I will understand? How do you deal with an escalating problem? What level of reporting and communication do you provide? What level of service guarantees can I expect and what happens when those are not met? If you were awarded the work, what would be the first task you would perform? While some of these tips and questions may seem obvious, more times than not most of these issues are never considered up front. These tips and questions will ultimately help a business pre-qualify potential suppliers so they can analyse up front if there is potential for a long term partnership, which is what every business is looking for. Multi IT & Telephony Solutions strives for long term business partners. Please feel free to contact us to discuss any IT requirements you may have.