What’s the Real Cost of Doing Your Own IT Management?

What’s the Real Cost of Doing Your Own IT Management?

IT Management, How Does it Costs?

When businesses first start out, it’s not unusual for them to try to do as much as possible themselves to help keep expenses down. They believe that if they “know a thing or two about computers” that they can just take care of IT issues themselves as they come up.

The problem is that technology has become increasingly complicated on the backend, even if the user interfaces seem simpler. For example, a program like Office 365 has hundreds of different settings for various security and file management parameters. If you don’t know what each of them impacts, you could end up either causing users to have difficulty accessing their data or leave your network unsecure.

When it comes to ongoing maintenance, computers that are unmanaged cost companies approximately $5,000 per year each, due to things like shortened lifespan and downtime costs. 80% of total IT costs come after the initial purchase.

The fact is that there are multiple moving parts to that critical technology infrastructure that keeps your business operating. These parts are designed to be addressed proactively by managed IT services. But if you’re trying to handle all your IT on your own, you can end up with costs far higher than the fee from a monthly services plan.

How Managed IT Services Lower Your IT Costs

Do-it-yourself IT management isn’t uncommon, especially for small businesses, but those business owners are often hurting their company by trying to handle their own technology needs.

What generally happens is that technology is left on its own until something happens, like a computer crash or virus infection, then they’ve got a costly mess to clean up and no relationship with an IT pro.

Here are some of the ways that doing your own IT can cost you more than using a proactive managed services plan.

Problems May Not Be Fixed Correctly

When you don’t have experience handling multiple IT issues day in and day out, it’s going to be much harder for you to correctly identify the cause of a technology problem and fix it properly.

IT pros are trained in diagnosis of many different types of tech issues, allowing them to address the problem and get it fixed right the first time,

If you misdiagnose an IT problem, you can end up spending hours on a “fix” that doesn’t address the problem at all, meaning more downtime and more of your or your team’s time taken away from your normal tasks trying to fix an IT issue.

Costly Downtime

Unexpected downtime of your computers or network mean lost business and costs from productivity losses.

The average cost of downtime is $5,600 per minute.

When businesses are handling their own IT, they generally don’t have proactive monitoring and maintenance in place and just take care of things as they come up, which means they experience more downtime than those companies with a managed IT services plan.

Security Costs from Breaches & Ransomware/Malware

An important part of a managed services plan is protecting your network from data breaches and malware or ransomware infections. Today’s network threats have become more sophisticated than ever, and they continue to grow.

When you’re relying on yourself or an employee to handle your IT, it could leave you open to a costly breach if all protections haven’t been put into place and you’re not regularly updating software on all devices.

A surprising 60% of all small businesses that experience a cyberattack end up closing their doors within 6 months because they never fully recover.

Managed IT services include things like managed antivirus/anti-malware, patch and update management, and continuous monitoring of your network for any threats.

Loss in Productivity Due to Dealing with IT Issues

When you’re working with a managed IT service provider, your employees can focus on their work instead of having to handle technology problems. If they have any needs, they can simply call your managed service provider for fast technical support.

When left on their own, a few minutes here and there dealing with IT problems on their own can add up to hours of lost productivity each month for your company.

You Get Multiple Services with a Managed Services Plan

When you sign up for a managed services plan, you’re not just getting one or two services, you’re getting multiple that cover everything your technology infrastructure needs to run efficiently.

You also have the flexibility to add additional services or not, depending upon your needs.

Unbound Digital’s managed services plans include:

  • GUARANTEED RESPONSE TIME
  • MANAGED ANTIVIRUS & ANTI-MALWARE
  • PATCH MANAGEMENT
  • HOURLY REPORTING
  • ONGOING MAINTENANCE
  • REMOTE SUPPORT ON DEMAND
  • MANAGED BACKUP

Additional managed services that you can choose from are:

  • WEB PROTECTION
  • EXCHANGE SERVER ANTISPAM
  • MANAGED ONLINE BACKUP
  • FIREWALL MAINTENANCE & TESTING
  • DEPLOYMENT AND NETWORK DESIGN
  • MOBILE DEVICE MANAGEMENT
  • VOIP PHONE SYSTEM MANAGEMENT

Keep Your IT Secure and Running Smoothly with a Managed Services Plan

Reduce your overall technology costs and ensure your IT, and business, are running smoothly by signing up for a managed services plan with Unbound Digital.

Contact us today to learn more by calling 423-335-2461 or reaching out online.