Many marketing companies in New York City are adopting managed IT services today. There is a good reason for this as it saves them the technical expertise, time, and cost for maintaining their IT systems. Marketers know the importance of opportunity cost. They know how valuable it is to dedicate their expertise and time to what they do best, and outsource an expert for the rest of what isn’t their specialty.

Managed IT service is a model where all your IT projects are outsourced to a third-party contractor for a monthly retainer fee. Therefore, the responsibility (and consequent burden) of IT maintenance is wholly passed from the business on to the managed services provider.

This saves your marketing business, for example, the headache of IT solutions for a predictable monthly cost. Ultimately, this would prove more efficient and affordable than an ad hoc model where your company pays service providers on a per-issue basis. The latter often turns out costlier.

Outsourcing your IT support to managed IT services providers in New York City is also an attractive deal for companies aiming to scale but lacking the technical resources (or business technology) to support the needed IT infrastructure.

Another beauty about managed service providers in New York City is that they have a vested interest in your business. Given that the contract precisely specifies a monthly fee – instead of an hourly fee – the provider would be on the losing side if more IT issues pop up across the month on your website or an entire system.

Consequently, this provider takes proactive steps to prevent any of these technical disruptions or malfunction from ever happening. This means there is a more harmonious alignment between your business outcome and theirs. This way, you don’t have to be ringing their help desk 24/7.

What does the package cover?

Managed IT services providers in New York City offer several packages for marketing companies. This ranges from traditional IT support for web development or software development (network, server, system, application, and financial services management) to IT support for services needing significant sophistication like disaster recovery.

These services are essentially determined by the service level agreements (SLA) between the marketing firm and the provider. The SLA outlines explicitly the least level of managed services the provider would be dispensing to you – say every month.

Most SLAs in New York City are built around cloud services or security services. For the former, the service provider plays the role of a broker between the cloud services and the business.

These days, with the alarming profusion in cyberattacks, more New York City marketing companies are beginning to outsource their cybersecurity solutions to designated security services providers. In turn, these providers fortify the business’s cyberinfrastructure, providing tech support for tasks like a backup (and disaster recovery), patch management, and breach protection.

What are the challenges of using a managed service provider in New York City?

PC repair service

While managed IT services providers could appear messianic, there are some grey areas you should be conscious of when using managed services in New York NY.

First is the issue of accountability

Your provider in New York must be transparent and relentlessly answerable to you, even as a small business. Consequently, communication – either via their help desk or directly to their technicians – is essential.

How well is the managed service provider fulfilling the specifications of the SLA? It is imperative to demand periodic reports from your provider. This way, you know how your IT needs management is going and, consequently, measuring their service’s output and efficiency.

Another challenge is the question of getting strategic IT planning

Your provider in New York NY should give you strategic IT planning. This provider should be strategizing ahead for your marketing company for the next one or two years. This expatiates the plans they have in place to improve and upgrade your IT infrastructure.

The good news is that these challenges can be adequately assuaged if you manage to get the befitting managed IT service provider in New York City (NYC).

Crucial considerations when choosing a managed IT services provider in New York NY

Moving to a managed IT services provider in New York NY as a marketing firm fundamentally has to be a win-win for both parties – most especially you. There are critical factors worth pondering over.

What are you paying for technology services?

Before you go for a managed IT services NYC, you must accurately determine your total IT cost. This ascertains how economically reasonable it is to go with a provider.

What do you pay (say monthly) for IT support services say on an hourly basis to an IT consulting firm? What is the financial consequence of the downtime you face in a month? How about the equivalent cost of the loss in productivity relative to the monthly wages you are disbursing?

Resorting to a managed IT services in New York NY will make sense if you have technical problems like your network and computer devices not being up to date, your systems are ridden with malfunctions, and if your data isn’t secure or your backups are not periodically tested.

If you find outsourcing to a managed service provider necessary after your IT cost analysis, you have to get an audit of your systems. To achieve this, you will select a handful of potential IT providers for the job.

Yes, the resume of the provider in New York NY matters. It suits you better if their portfolio is decked with some impressive successes (or an interesting case study they worked on) in your industry. More than this, you should be comfortable with their operational model.

Businesses should put effort into getting reputable services companies because an audit is penetrative by nature, involving the provider in NYC having access to sensitive data (and aspects) of your business. The managed services company must have a robust privacy policy.

If all the parts fall into place, you can go ahead to get the audit. This can be done right in your office, or the services companies can execute the audit remotely in New York, United States.

Go on to Onboarding

Repair PC

We are assuming here that you have gotten your desired managed IT services NYC. Next comes the onboarding process. As we pointed out, services companies must be genuinely aligned with your business outcomes – ever willing to take proactive steps to mitigate technical disruptions.

This makes life much easier for both you and the IT services company. Admittedly, this may not be the cheapest IT services agency in New York. More importantly, you should be prepared to pay a premium for a befitting IT services company that will significantly ramp up your IT efficiency, reduce your downtime (website or entire system), and shoot up output.

If the managed provider meets these criteria, you can get the onboarding process started. Here, you would be making security adjustments to terminate the access of the IT services company to your systems as determined by the arranged privacy policy. This could go on to determine what they can legally reveal about your businesses if they were to use them in a case study.

You should be finalizing documentation and other vital details like network diagrams and checklists to ensure you can appropriately administer your IT ecosystem.

Typically, this spans four weeks. Consequently, your signed contract with the designated IT services companies kicks off at least one month after signing.

Importance of getting a managed cybersecurity service provider for marketers

Unsurprisingly, cyber vandals are frequently targeting marketers in New York today. With more marketers integrating digital solutions, there is increased vulnerability for hackers to explore.

From your social media, website down to your email, hackers are lurking and probing for a vulnerability to break in. Sadly, just one breach can be game-ending. 

Averagely, a single data breach cost American businesses $8 million. A frightening reality, isn’t it?

As a marketer, the world doesn’t expect you to be technically skilled enough to battle cyber criminals. The good news is managed cybersecurity service providers can get the job done for you, preventing any unfortunate breach or compromise that could lethally cost your beloved marketing firm.

Alright, we can hear you asking how these managed cybersecurity services can help. We will tell you.

They can help you take care of your CMS updates

As a contemporary marketer, CMS platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal, make your life much easier. Periodically, they will need updates. 

When you run an outdated CMS, you are giving hackers an invite to breach your systems. You can be sure they will not be rude enough to turn down the invite.   

Some of these systems download software updates automatically; others require more technical expertise to manage. As a marketer, you may not be adept at it. A managed cybersecurity provider will ensure you are always running the up-to-date versions of your CMS while fixing any security patch along the way.

More than updates, such managed service providers can advise you on the best password policies to adopt to keep your CMS safe. They can also give your team the necessary cyber awareness training to prevent introducing penetrable vulnerabilities to your CMS accidentally.

They can better help you handle your handle transaction data

It is no good news to know that hackers are regularly prowling eCommerce sites, looking for loopholes in your data transaction practices. Hackers are particularly interested in your customer payment data, trying to hijack your system with malware to steal such data.

Sadly, many marketers don’t know how to handle this securely. Well, you wouldn’t necessarily blame them for such technical paucity; marketers are majorly interested in dollar signs, not nullifying hackers.

Getting a managed cybersecurity provider can relieve you from the day-to-day burden of securing your data transactions. These providers could fortify your systems with top-notch firewalls and anti-malware solutions.

They can also equip your websites with CAPTCHA tests, ensuring that bots instead of humans aren’t submitting information to your system. Some providers could choose to furnish your systems with extra layers of encryption for such sensitive data.

Therefore, in the circumstance of an unfortunate data breach, the data is unintelligible. This reduces its immediate usefulness and consequently slashing down the potential collateral damage.

They can help in securing your domain

Sites are vulnerable to attacks like cross-site scripting, DDoS, and SQL injection attacks. In some cases, this can result in hackers gaining illicit access to your backend database, triggering costly downtime for your website, or ultimately leveraging malicious codes to steal visitor data.

Managed cybersecurity can protect you against this by outfitting your websites with the necessary digital certificates and firewall solutions.

It is not the best of news, but cyber felons are targeting your marketing firm as you read this. Are you going to let them succeed? You could instinctively blurt a loud NO, but you could be practically screaming YES by not getting an expert to handle your cybersecurity.