Compare MSP to Full Time Helpdesk Employee
Have you heard your IT staff make any of the following comments?
- “We need to hire someone to take care of all this little stuff”
- “If I had someone to help me, then I could focus on activities that add value”
- “I’m buried in the urgent issues, and I can’t get to the important ones”
Although these statements are common to small and medium businesses (SMBs), they are symptomatic of problems that result in excess spending and lost opportunity. At the core of these statements are the following issues:
- IT is not aligned with, or focusing on strategic “value-add” activities
- Quantifiable IT metrics and key performance indicators (KPI’s) are not enforced
- IT functions unpredictably, reacting to problems in an ad-hoc manner.
Today many organizations spend valuable time on the mundane, repetitive maintenance of the massive systems they have come to rely on.
- Reviewing dozens of reports logs from servers, firewalls, Antivirus and Backup software.
- Managing the constant flow of hardware and software asset changes
- Identifying the need for, testing and deploying security patches and updates
- Testing disaster recovery procedures
- Repetitive distribution of known solutions to common problems
From a financial perspective, IT costs are equally unpredictable and difficult to associate with real value. While adding an additional employee would (in theory) increase the capacity of IT, the cost of additional head count is significant as shown below:
| Full Time Employee vs. MSP Comprehensive |
Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 |
| Recruitment Cost | $ 5,000 | ||
| Salary (+ 3%/yr) | $ 45,000 | $ 46,350 | $ 47,741 |
| Health Care ($800/mo + 18%/yr) | $ 9,600 | $ 11,328 | $ 13,367.04 |
| 401k (3%) | $ 1,350 | $ 1,391 | $ 1,432 |
| Workers Comp | $ 40 | $ 40 | $ 40 |
| Tax (20%) | $ 9,000 | $ 9,270 | $ 9,548 |
| Training | $ 5,000 | $ 2,500 | $ 2,500 |
| Computer, software | $ 5,000 | $ 500 | $ 500 |
| Desk Space | $ 2,000 | ||
| Total FTE Costs | $ 81,990 | $ 153,369 | $ 228,496 |
| Total MSP Costs | $ 78,000 | $ 102,000 | $ 135,000 |
| MSP Savings | $ 3,990 | $ 51,369 | $ 93,496 |
| FTE | MSP | |
| Skill Set | A single skill set is required to perform many functions. You need to pay to add more skills. | Thinsolutions account managers select the technician from the team who has the advanced skill set that corresponds to a specific situation. Thinsolutions invests in advanced training for all technicians. |
| Experience | Several years experience, grows in real-time | Pool of 100+years combined experience, grows exponentially as Thinsolutions does. |
| Scalability | Limited to a single task in one location | Thinsolutions can "swarm" on a single critical or complex issue, or spread out throughout the nation to cover all the bases simultaneously. |
| Cost | Higher cost will only increase. Difficult to associate the value of soft costs like healthcare. | Lower, predictable costs are easy to associate to value. |
- Peace of Mind - that seasoned professionals are using advanced tools to predict and prevent any risk as soon as it is visible.
- Increased Productivity - because the key network elements are more reliable and available.
- Faster & cheaper issue resolution - because we notify our technicians in real-time, with the exact location and cause of a real or developing problem.
- Reduce time spent on maintenance - using automation, we manage the exceptions to a library of internationally accepted standards, so you can focus on your core.
- Predictable & lower costs - we take the bite out of IT planning and execution.