“We’re probably too small for managed IT.”
We hear some version of this pretty often.
Maybe you have 10 employees.
Maybe 20.
Maybe you have one office where everybody knows everybody, your accounting person doubles as the unofficial Microsoft 365 expert, and somebody’s nephew helped set up the WiFi three years ago.
Everything works.
Well, most of the time.
So when does a business actually become big enough to need managed IT services?
The answer has less to do with the number of employees you have and a lot more to do with how dependent your business has become on technology.
If losing access to your computers, email, files, phones or business applications would make it difficult for your employees to work, your business probably needs someone actively managing that technology.
That does not necessarily mean hiring a full time IT employee.
And it certainly does not mean you need to become a giant company first.
Let’s talk about when managed IT actually starts making sense.
What Are Managed IT Services?
Managed IT Services are essentially outsourced IT management.
Instead of waiting until something breaks and calling someone to fix it, a Managed Service Provider, commonly called an MSP, takes ongoing responsibility for maintaining, supporting, securing and improving your technology.
That can include things like:
- Employee technical support
- Computer monitoring and maintenance
- Cybersecurity
- Microsoft 365 management
- Backup and recovery
- Network management
- Software updates
- Hardware lifecycle planning
- New employee onboarding
- Employee offboarding
- Vendor management
- Technology planning
- Cybersecurity training
- Documentation
At Digital Boardwalk, our Fully Managed IT Services are designed around something we call Mature IT Operations.
The idea is pretty simple.
Your technology should not just be fixed when something goes wrong.
It should be actively managed so fewer things go wrong in the first place.
How Many Employees Do You Need Before Managed IT Makes Sense?
There is no magic number.
You do not hire an MSP because employee number 25 suddenly walked through the door.
A 10 person accounting firm handling sensitive financial information might have significantly more technology and cybersecurity needs than a 40 person company where most employees rarely touch a computer.
Instead of asking how many employees you have, ask how much your employees depend on technology.
For example:
- Does everyone have a computer?
- Does your team rely heavily on email?
- Are important files stored digitally?
- Do employees access sensitive customer information?
- Do you use Microsoft 365?
- Do employees work remotely?
- Do you have industry specific applications?
- Would losing internet access significantly affect operations?
- Would losing your server or cloud applications stop employees from working?
- Do you have cybersecurity or compliance requirements?
If you answered yes to several of those questions, the size of the company starts becoming much less important.
Your technology is already part of the business.
Someone needs to take responsibility for managing it.
Is a 10 Person Business Too Small for Managed IT?
Not necessarily.
In fact, smaller businesses can sometimes benefit the most from having professional IT management because they usually do not have dedicated internal technology resources.
In a 10 person company, IT responsibilities often fall onto whoever happens to know the most about computers.
That person might be the office manager.
The operations manager.
The owner.
The youngest employee in the building.
Or that one person who made the mistake of successfully fixing the printer once and has now accidentally become IT forever.
The problem is that none of those people were actually hired to manage technology.
Every hour they spend troubleshooting Outlook, setting up computers or trying to figure out why the WiFi keeps disconnecting is an hour they are not doing the job you actually hired them to do.
Managed IT allows those employees to get back to their real responsibilities while someone else takes ownership of the technology.
What Are the Signs My Business Has Outgrown Break Fix IT?
A lot of small businesses start with what the IT industry calls break fix support.
Something breaks.
You call someone.
They fix it.
You pay the bill.
Everyone moves on.
For very small organizations with simple technology, that can work.
The problem is that your business can eventually outgrow that model without realizing it.
Some warning signs include:
- Employees regularly lose time dealing with recurring technical problems
- The owner or another employee has become the unofficial IT department
- Nobody knows exactly what technology the company owns
- Computers are replaced only after they fail
- New employees do not have everything they need on their first day
- Former employees still have access to company systems
- Backups exist but nobody regularly tests them
- Employees complain about slow computers or unreliable WiFi
- Software licenses are scattered across different accounts
- Nobody is regularly reviewing cybersecurity
- You only talk to your IT company when something breaks
One or two of these might not seem particularly alarming.
But when they start stacking up, they create something we see all the time.
Technology debt.
Little problems get ignored because they are not urgent enough today.
Eventually they become tomorrow’s emergency.
Does Managed IT Cost More Than Calling Someone When Something Breaks?
Sometimes.
At least if you only look at the IT invoice.
Break fix IT can appear inexpensive during months when nothing major happens.
But that does not account for everything else.
Imagine an employee has a computer problem that takes two hours to resolve.
You are not just paying for the repair.
You are also paying that employee for two hours of lost productivity.
If that problem affects five employees, the cost grows.
If a server fails, the cost grows considerably.
If ransomware locks your company out of its systems, you have an entirely different problem.
The real cost of IT is not simply what you pay your IT provider.
It also includes:
- Employee downtime
- Lost productivity
- Emergency repairs
- Unexpected hardware purchases
- Security incidents
- Lost data
- Missed customer opportunities
- Delayed projects
- Business interruptions
That is why proactive IT management is designed to reduce problems rather than simply wait for them.
If you are curious about what businesses should actually be spending on technology, we also put together a guide answering another common question: Should My Business Have a Separate IT Budget?.
Planning tends to be much cheaper than emergencies.
When Should a Small Business Hire an IT Person?
Eventually, many growing companies reach this question.
Do we hire someone internally or outsource IT?
There are advantages to having an internal IT employee.
They know your organization.
They are physically available.
They become familiar with your employees and workflows.
But one IT employee also has limitations.
One person cannot realistically specialize in everything.
Modern business technology can involve:
- Cybersecurity
- Microsoft 365
- Networking
- Servers
- Cloud infrastructure
- Help desk support
- Backup and recovery
- Compliance
- Vendor management
- Hardware procurement
- Strategic planning
Then there are vacations.
Sick days.
Training.
After hours emergencies.
And eventually that employee needs help too.
This is one reason smaller businesses often choose an MSP instead of immediately building an internal IT department.
You gain access to an entire team with different areas of expertise rather than relying on one person to know everything.
What If We Already Have an IT Person?
Then managed IT can still make sense.
It just looks a little different.
Maybe your internal IT person is excellent at supporting employees but does not have time to manage cybersecurity.
Maybe your IT Director is spending half the day resetting passwords instead of working on strategic projects.
Maybe you need additional help desk coverage.
Or maybe your IT department simply needs more people without adding several full time positions.
That is where Co Managed IT Services can help.
Instead of replacing your internal IT team, Digital Boardwalk works alongside them.
Your internal team keeps the responsibilities that make sense while we help fill the gaps.
It gives businesses access to additional tools, people and expertise without forcing them into an all or nothing decision.
Is My Business Big Enough to Need Cybersecurity?
Yes.
This is one area where company size should not determine whether you take the problem seriously.
Cybercriminals do not check your employee count before sending a phishing email.
They do not care that you only have 15 employees.
They care whether they can get in.
Small businesses still have email accounts, passwords, bank accounts, customer information, Microsoft 365 environments and computers worth compromising.
The problem is that smaller organizations frequently have fewer resources dedicated to protecting those things.
Cybersecurity should include multiple layers of protection rather than relying on antivirus software and hoping employees do not click anything suspicious.
Digital Boardwalk offers Managed Cybersecurity Services designed to help businesses identify, prevent and respond to modern threats.
Because one employee clicking one convincing email can turn into a very expensive afternoon.
What Happens If Our Technology Goes Down?
This is another good way to decide whether your business has reached the point where managed IT makes sense.
Imagine arriving tomorrow morning and discovering that your most important technology is unavailable.
Could employees still work?
Could customers reach you?
Could you access your files?
Could you process transactions?
How long could you operate that way?
We recently explored this question in more detail in How Long Can Your Business Actually Survive Without Its Technology?.
The smaller your tolerance for downtime, the more important proactive IT management becomes.
And having backups alone is not enough.
Those backups need to be monitored, maintained and tested.
Digital Boardwalk’s Backup & Recovery Services are designed around both protecting your information and helping your business recover when something goes wrong.
What Should an MSP Actually Be Doing Every Month?
This is important.
Hiring a Managed Service Provider should not simply mean paying someone every month for the privilege of calling them when something breaks.
There should be work happening behind the scenes.
Your MSP should be:
- Monitoring your technology
- Reviewing cybersecurity
- Managing updates
- Verifying backups
- Reviewing alerts
- Maintaining documentation
- Looking for recurring problems
- Tracking aging hardware
- Improving the environment
- Planning for future technology needs
We actually wrote an entire article answering What Does an MSP Do Every Month? because much of the value of managed IT happens before an employee ever submits a support ticket.
The goal should be fewer surprises.
Not simply faster responses to them.
What Does Managed IT Look Like for a Small Business?
It should not feel like bringing an enterprise IT department into a small office and making everything unnecessarily complicated.
Good managed IT should actually make technology feel simpler.
Employees should know who to contact when they need help.
New employees should have what they need when they start.
Computers should be monitored and maintained.
Security should happen in the background.
Backups should be tested.
Technology purchases should be planned.
And the owner should not need to become an IT expert just to make sure everything is being handled.
You should be able to run your business.
Your IT company should handle the IT.
How Do I Know If My Small Business Is Ready for Managed IT?
Ask yourself a few questions.
- Are employees losing productive time because of technology problems?
- Are IT responsibilities distracting employees from their actual jobs?
- Do we have someone actively responsible for cybersecurity?
- Do we know whether our backups actually work?
- Do we have a plan for replacing aging computers?
- Is someone regularly reviewing our network and technology?
- Do new employees receive properly configured accounts and equipment?
- Are former employees immediately removed from company systems?
- Do we know what would happen if our server or cloud environment became unavailable?
- Are we planning technology expenses or reacting to them?
If several of those questions make you uncomfortable, your company probably is not too small for managed IT.
You might actually be exactly the size where it starts becoming valuable.
You Do Not Need to Be a Big Business to Have Good IT
There is a strange assumption that professional IT management is something businesses earn after reaching a certain size.
It isn’t.
You do not need 500 employees.
You do not need a giant corporate headquarters.
You do not need an enormous technology budget.
You just need a business that depends on technology.
The question is not:
“Are we big enough for managed IT?”
A better question is:
“Has technology become important enough to our business that someone should be actively managing it?”
If the answer is yes, it might be time to stop waiting for things to break.
At Digital Boardwalk, our Fully Managed IT Services help small and mid sized businesses turn IT from a collection of problems into a technology environment that is actively managed, secured and improved.
Not sure where your current IT environment stands?
Talk with the Digital Boardwalk team and let’s take a look at what you have, where the gaps are and whether managed IT actually makes sense for your business.
Because sometimes the biggest sign that you need an IT strategy is realizing that your current strategy is simply hoping nothing breaks.