Pros And Cons Of Break/Fix Vs. Managed IT

All businesses in the world need to have an approach to IT which is robust, and which keeps them competitive in their industry. If you don’t have that, you are going to find many problems cropping up again and again. IT can be expensive to run and difficult to manage, and this is something you need to be aware of.

There are two major types of IT management businesses often go for: the break/fix approach, which is a reactionary way of approaching things, and managed IT services, in which things are being managed from the top-down at all times. Let’s compare these methods.

Personal Issues Are More Problematic

Because the break/fix approach tends to have one person looking after the IT, that means that any personal problems they might have are going to be much more problematic compared to if you have a whole team managing things for you. Any personal emergencies can put your IT system out of action just like that. With a managed services IT team, someone will be able to pick up the slack.

Tackling Many Tasks

With a managed service provider, you have a whole team that can approach a number of tasks at once. This is closer to the reality of what it is really like having IT systems, as there is often the chance that more than one thing will go wrong at any one time. If you only have one person in a break/fix approach setup, you are going to find that only one problem can be attended to at a time.

Investing In Proactive Technology

The whole point of break/fix is that it is reactive rather than proactive. And a big part of that, which is likely to have a profound effect on the future of your business, is that they won’t be focused on investing in proactive technology, the kind of tech which can really help to mitigate issues and improve business productivity overall. A managed service provider will be on the lookout for these proactive means, however, because they are providing a continual service and it makes their job easier to keep on top of things, and stop problems cropping up in the first place.

Predicting Costs

One big problem with the break/fix approach is that there is no good way to predict costs that can arise as a natural part of taking care of an IT system. There is the cost of any repair to consider, and the cost of any subsequent downtime too, and these generally need to be considered in order to plan for the future of the business. Conversely, managed services are going to work at a flat, predictable rate, making budgeting so much easier all year round, no matter what issues might arise.

As you can see, there are so many huge advantages to using the managed IT service approach over a break/fix approach. You need to make sure that you are making the right decision for your business.

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