Effective managed IT services can supercharge your productivity and efficiency to revolutionize the way you do business and help you achieve higher profits. But at the end of the day, these services are delivered by humans and can therefore be subject to human error. Such mistakes by your managed services provider (MSP) may mean that you might not be getting your money’s worth.
Measuring the ROI of your managed IT services will help you determine if your MSP is worth the cost or if it's time to move on to a provider who will maximize your IT spend.
How to measure the ROI of your managed IT services
To see if you are getting your money’s worth, you’ll need to inspect a few things. You need to look at what your MSP promised, what they are actively doing for you, and their impact on your business operations. This might take some time, but avoiding poor ROI from sticking with an underperforming MSP is well worth it in the long run.
Compare historical revenue and ROI reports
If you keep detailed accounting and business records from before the time you hired an MSP, these can give you valuable insight. Compare them to your current financial reports and operating efficiency to see if you are better off now with your managed IT services or worse.
Review your service level agreement
Your service level agreement (SLA) is the contract you signed with your MSP that states what services they are required to provide and the minimum standards for those services. Key metrics covered by an MSP’s SLA include:
- Response time – how long it takes them to get back to you after a service request
- Resolution time – how long it takes them to fix your IT issue
- Network uptime – how often your network is available (typically 99% of the time or more)
- Scope of services – all of the services they provide for each component of your IT network
If your MSP is failing to fully meet the terms of your SLA even though you’re paying the full cost for their services, that’s a sure sign you are getting poor ROI.
Check cybersecurity reporting
Improving your workforce’s productivity is a key part of managed IT services, but preventing catastrophic damage to your business is also one of their primary responsibilities. An MSP might not be supercharging your revenue as much as you would like, but if they are preventing costly, damaging, and potentially business-ending cyberattacks, you’re still getting great ROI.
To determine if this is the case, review your cybersecurity reports, looking for:
- The number of cyberattacks stopped
- The prevalence of phishing and scam communications you’re receiving
- The breadth of your MSP’s cybersecurity monitoring
- The predicted cost of a major data breach for your organization
- The performance of your data backup and disaster recovery tools during tests
- The level of cybersecurity education your employees have
Data breaches can be untenably expensive, so if your cybersecurity services are sufficient to prevent even one, they have paid for themselves. If you are frequently struggling with cybersecurity issues or aren’t sure if you could survive a data breach, your money is better spent elsewhere.
Gather feedback and monitor KPIs
Ask your team how often they need IT support now versus before. Monitor key performance indicators like ticket resolution time, network uptime, or system performance. Track software usage, help desk requests, and cybersecurity incidents. These metrics help form a complete picture of how your managed IT services are impacting operations.
Also ask for general feedback about how they feel about your managed IT services. High numbers are great, but if your workforce feels unsupported, frustrated, and underserved by your MSP, their performance will suffer as well as their trust in your organization.
Get an expert second opinion on your managed IT services ROI
You may you feel like you need to lean on a more experienced and knowledgeable resource for assessing your MSP. Should this be the case, you can enlist the help of a different IT provider to determine whether you are getting good ROI from your first MSP.
Contact outsourceIT for a free consultation, and we’ll inspect your IT network to help you determine if you are getting your money’s worth. But you won’t have to take our word for it that we can do better; we’ll show you in real terms with a detailed plan of how we can maximize your technology ROI.
