Managed service providers often face managed service challenges when providing services.
For example, a small business may grow too quickly and face scalability issues. Or a medium-sized business could be struggling with project completion, while an enterprise may just be looking for a more cost-effective way to manage – or even automate – repetitive tasks.
Given the varying IT service demands of businesses and the challenges MSPs face across the managed service market, there is a lot to keep in mind when considering the biggest challenges facing the managed IT service market.
To provide you with insight about some of the most common IT managed service provider challenges and how to overcome them, this article will examine the top six managed service challenges.
The Top 6 Managed Services Providers Challenges
1. Managed Security is Changing
More than 155 million records are exposed annually from data breaches in the United States.
With U.S. businesses remaining the most targeted sector of data breaches and 68% of U.S. companies having experienced (and paid) ransomware attacks, managed security is growing more difficult as MSPs threat management grows threefold around:
- Maintaining the upper hand on evolving cyber threats
- Familiarizing themselves with the threat landscapes across industry sectors
- Increased efforts to improve cybersecurity risk awareness, training, and specialization across organizations and MSPs is essential to curb cyber attacks
When turning to MSPs to cover your IT needs, it’s important for their service offerings to be flexible around your current and future IT needs by providing managed services such as:
- Helpdesk services
- Remote monitoring
- Network management
- And more
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2. Delayed Responses
As convenient as real-time 24/7/365 support would be for most businesses, it’s not always an option depending on an organization’s structure, size, and budget.
As a result, many MSPs offer guaranteed response times for their services and support. Generally, these guaranteed response times are found in service level agreements (SLAs).
Depending on your organization’s needs, prolonged response times may be okay, but just remember that downtime can cost businesses an average of $5,600 per minute.
3. Lack of Scalability
Most MSPs should be able to facilitate your organization’s growth by guiding and supporting your business with new IT strategies as it grows and its IT demands change.
Ideally, your managed service provider should be proactive with their approaches.
From discovering and deploying the best technology and solutions for your organization to maintaining and upgrading your infrastructure with varying levels of support, MSPs are great at providing flexible IT support, but only if you find managed services customizable to your needs.
4. Rapid Cloud Adoption
Research shows that roughly 69% of companies have accelerated cloud migration over the past 12 months.
As more companies ramp up their cloud solutions, cloud-based vulnerabilities have also increased, creating more frequent and sophisticated IT challenges for managed service providers to overcome.
In addition, the average cost of a breach in hybrid cloud environments is $3.61 million, while most breaches remain undetected for an average of 287 days.
5. Customer Retention
In the wake of the Great Resignation, many managed service providers have difficulty finding a reliable partner and meeting their growth goals.
From ensuring alignment between company culture and service expectations to overcoming mission-critical service provider challenges, working with MSPs means investing in your organization’s IT infrastructure and capabilities regardless of whether you work from home, the office, or on the go.
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6. Avoiding Social Engineering Attacks
Human-based vulnerabilities are often the weakest links in an organization’s cybersecurity architecture. For instance, compromised credentials were the most common attack vector of cyber attacks and were responsible for 20% of breaches.
Given how social engineering data breaches are the fourth costliest, averaging $4.47 million, and how the frequency of social engineering attacks rising, one of the toughest challenges faced by managed service providers would be preventing social engineering attacks.
A few ways organizations spearhead their fight against social engineering attacks includes:
- Cyber security awareness training
- Implementing email and spam filtering solutions
- Separating departmental data and processes with improved user access
- Deploying stronger security processes, such as multi-factor authentication (MFA)
Avoid Managed Services Challenges With a Trusted IT Partner
Overcome Managed Services Providers Challenges With KDIT
IT managed service challenges come in all shapes and sizes. They can vary depending on the challenges faced by both an organization and their managed service provider.
That’s why at KDIT, we work hard to ensure we understand the nuances and challenges that your organization faces through our managed service offerings.
Supporting more than 3,500 endpoints monthly and the needs of multiple organizations, our technicians know what it takes to keep your business protected, operating at peak performance, and ensure it aligns with your goals.
To learn more about our managed IT services and the approaches we take to avoid common challenges, contact us today to learn more.