It may seem counterintuitive but medium and large enterprises that outsource IT tasks to Managed IT Service Providers (MSPs) often drive greater innovation than those organizations that do all their IT in-house.

Among medium and large enterprises, the usual arguments against outsourcing include the following:

• outsourcing IT would lead to reduced innovation internally, and

• it would limit the organization’s control over its IT infrastructure

However, if you partner with the right MSP, typically, the opposite happens. By handling routine IT operations, security, and maintenance, MSPs free up the in-house IT teams to focus on strategic initiatives, innovation, and technology development. This gives the internal teams the latitude they need to experiment with new technologies, improve processes, or tackle unique projects that directly contribute to the company’s growth, which they wouldn't have the bandwidth for if bogged down with day-to-day management

In this blog post, we discuss how medium and large enterprises can fuel their IT transformation and drive innovation by outsourcing their day-to-day IT tasks to Jones IT.

1. Developing A Strategic IT Roadmap

A Strategic IT Roadmap is a long-term plan outlining how an organization’s technology will evolve to meet its business goals. The purpose of the roadmap is to help decision-makers prioritize technology initiatives, manage IT investments, and align IT infrastructure with business strategy. Ultimately, turning IT systems into an enabler of growth, improving efficiency and competitiveness.

The roadmap covers all areas of IT, including infrastructure, cybersecurity, and the adoption of emerging technologies. Typically, it is a detailed document containing timelines, milestones, and key performance indicators (KPIs) for tracking progress and ensuring that the IT strategy supports the overall business objectives.

A strategic IT roadmap is built on a thorough understanding of the organization’s IT infrastructure, ensures that IT initiatives directly contribute to achieving business goals, and plans for future growth, ensuring that the technology can scale as the business expands.

Jones IT can play a crucial role in helping your organization create and execute strategic IT roadmaps. Here’s how we contribute:

1. Conducting In-Depth IT Assessment

We conduct a thorough evaluation of the organization’s current IT infrastructure, assessing its hardware, software, network architecture, security protocols, and cloud services. This allows us to understand the existing landscape and identify areas for improvement.

2. Aligning IT Initiatives With Business Goals

We collaborate with the organization’s leadership to determine which technologies are best suited to achieve their business objectives, and ensure that IT initiatives are aligned with those goals, 

3. Prioritizing And Managing Resources

We help organizations prioritize IT projects based on impact, cost, and resource availability. Additionally, we can also create a plan to address low-hanging fruits and quick wins to gain stakeholder buy-in and gather momentum, while planning for long-term enhancements.

4. Providing Rapid Scalability And Future-Proofing

We design IT strategies that allow for growth and anticipate future technology needs. This ensures that the IT infrastructure is flexible enough to accommodate new demands without significant overhauls.

5. Integrating Security And Compliance Into The Roadmap

We also ensure that security is integrated into the roadmap, addressing potential vulnerabilities and ensuring compliance with industry regulations

6. Continually Optimizing

Lastly, we also continually monitor and refine the IT roadmap, reviewing performance data, tracking KPIs, and adjusting strategies to ensure alignment with evolving business goals

By leveraging our over two decades of experience and expertise, we help organizations create strategic, actionable, and future-ready IT roadmaps.

2. Modernizing The IT Infrastructure

IT infrastructure plays a significant role in the growth, productivity, and competitive edge of any organization. Modern, cutting-edge infrastructure facilitates productivity and growth, while outdated infrastructure hinders growth and scalability.

Older systems are prone to frequent downtime and inefficiencies in day-to-day operations caused by slower performance. This can result in delays, lower employee productivity, and the inability to support modern business processes or customer expectations that require high-speed and reliable systems.

As IT systems age, they require more frequent repairs and maintenance, increasing operational costs. Legacy systems typically are more vulnerable to cyberattacks and data breaches as they lack the latest security features.

More importantly, outdated infrastructure often cannot accommodate growth, limiting the organization’s ability to scale operations, adopt new technologies, or integrate with modern systems. Due to these reasons, organizations with outdated systems struggle to keep up with competitors using advanced, cutting-edge technologies and a modern infrastructure.

However, modernizing the IT infrastructure of an organization dependent on high availability and uninterrupted operations, is a complex project. An experienced MSP, like Jones IT can play a vital role in helping enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure with minimal disruption to their operations.

Based on the strategic roadmap, as discussed in the previous section, Jones IT helps businesses replace legacy systems with modern, scalable, flexible, and cost-effective solutions. This may include network infrastructure redesign and overhaul, cloud migration and virtualization, cybersecurity enhancements, etc.

Our goal for infrastructure modernization is not just to facilitate growth and productivity, but also to optimize costs, helping businesses transition from a capital expenditure (CapEx) to an operating expenditure (OpEx) model through cloud solutions and as-a-service models, allowing them to pay for only the resources they use.

We also ensure that the modernization process is seamless, with minimal disruption to business operations. To achieve this, we provide end-to-end services, including managing the implementation of new hardware and software, the integration of cloud solutions, and the training of employees on the new systems.

By working with Jones IT, businesses can modernize their IT infrastructure effectively, ensuring that their technology initiatives align with current business needs and future growth, while also enhancing security, reducing costs, and improving operational efficiency.

3. Enhancing Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is a growing concern for any organization, but especially for those handling sensitive data. MSPs like Jones IT play a crucial role in enhancing cybersecurity for medium and large enterprises by offering a range of services designed to protect against evolving cyber threats.

Here's how we safeguard your critical business assets and enhance security:

1. Comprehensive Security Assessments

Just like the infrastructure modernization process, cybersecurity enhancement also begins with a thorough assessment of a company's security systems to identify vulnerabilities and gaps in its security posture. However, this is not a one-time process. We conduct regular audits to help ensure continuous improvement and adaptation to new threats.

2. 24/7 Monitoring and Threat Detection

To cater to organizations requiring a high level of cybersecurity, we provide around-the-clock monitoring of IT systems using advanced tools like Security Information and Event Management (SIEM). This makes it possible to detect potential threats in real-time and enables swift response to prevent breaches.

3. Incident Response and Disaster Recovery

In the rare event of a breach, we are fully equipped with incident response protocols to contain and neutralize the threat. To further reduce the impact of cyberattacks, we also implement robust disaster recovery solutions, ensuring business continuity and minimizing downtime.

4. Holistic Approach To Security

We employ a holistic approach to security, addressing all the 3 pillars of IT security, namely, products, processes, and people, to build an effective and sustainable defense against security threats.

This approach helps in the following three ways- First, by selecting the right security products to cover most if not all of these security vulnerabilities and gaps. Second, implementing clear and consistent IT policies, processes, and procedures is to provide relevant direction as well as a sense of ownership and accountability. Third, supporting employees with continuous education and cybersecurity training, empowering them to make secure choices.

4. Leading Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is the implementation of digital technology that translates business processes into a digital format, creating new products, services, and operations, or modifying existing ones. It is not simply about modernizing processes, but fundamentally changing the way of doing business, transforming how businesses operate and deliver value to their customers.

In today’s changing business landscape, digital transformation is a necessity for long-term sustainability and profitability. MSPs, like Jones IT, can play an instrumental role in driving successful digital transformations for businesses. Thanks to our expertise and extensive experience in strategizing, planning, and implementing digital initiatives, we are able to accurately assess current systems, identify gaps, and recommend innovative technology solutions that closely align with the organization’s business objectives.

Our guidance helps organizations select the right technology, optimize processes, and adapt to evolving market trends, enabling them to better navigate complex digital landscapes and ensuring a seamless transition toward a more agile, competitive, and technology-led future.

Recommended further reading on digital transformation: 

• Understanding Digital Transformation From A Small Business Perspective

• How To Lead Digital Transformation: Leadership In A Digital Environment

5. Cost Optimization and Predictable Spending

As mentioned earlier, one of our goals is to help organizations move from CapEx to OpEx model, optimizing IT costs. One of the ways we help achieve this is by providing scalable pricing models with predictable monthly fees for IT services, eliminating the need for large-scale hiring and associated costs.

Another way in which we help organizations optimize their IT costs is by effectively managing their IT inventory and assets. Using our proprietary device lifecycle management software, we help organizations achieve a balanced level of IT inventory. This ensures that the organization doesn’t lock up capital in excessive inventory or add unnecessary costs for storage and insurance.

Last but not least, we help organizations avoid the often-overlooked expenses associated with in-house IT management, bringing improved transparency and greater control over IT budgets. We have discussed this in detail in our earlier blog post The Actual Costs of DIY IT Management: A Cost-Benefit Analysis.

6. Compliance and Risk Management

Many industries are subject to strict regulations like HIPAA, PCI-DSS, etc. In addition to these regulations, there also are security standards like ISO 27001, SOC 2, etc. that businesses are expected to comply with. Non-compliance can lead to significant financial penalties, legal issues, and reputational damage.

On the other hand, risk management involves identifying, assessing, and mitigating risks that could harm an organization. Risks can come from various sources, such as cybersecurity threats, financial mismanagement, or operational inefficiencies. Effective risk management involves creating policies and systems that protect the company from potential harm and ensure business continuity.

Compliance and risk management, therefore, have become critical components of any organization’s strategy to ensure it adheres to legal requirements and proactively addresses potential threats that could negatively impact the business.

Here’s how MSPs like Jones IT can play a crucial role in helping businesses manage compliance and mitigate risks:

1. Security and Data Protection

In addition to security enhancements covered in the earlier sections, we help businesses protect their data from a wide range of external as well as internal threats. For this, we implement several data security controls, including:

• Physical controls like access restrictions, Mobile Device Management (MDM), and network segmentation;

• Technical controls like Access Control Lists (ACLs), Identity And Access Management (IAM), and data encryption;

• Administrative controls like data classification and data usage policy.

2. Risk Assessments

We regularly perform risk assessments to identify vulnerabilities in IT systems and processes, which allows us to proactively address potential threats before they escalate into costly issues.

3. Training and Policy Development

We also assist in developing robust IT policies and provide training for employees on compliance and risk management protocols. This ensures that all stakeholders are aware of best practices in handling sensitive data, which is a critical aspect of reducing human error-related risks.

4. Compliance Audits and Reporting

To ensure audit readiness, we conduct internal audits and remediation. We also implement solutions for continuously monitoring and collecting evidence of the organization's security controls, and streamlining compliance workflows to ensure audit readiness. We can also liaise with external auditors to ensure that the audits are smooth and efficient.

Recommended further reading on compliance:

• How To Prepare Your Startup For Compliance

• PCI Compliance Guide For Small Businesses

• How To Prepare IT Systems For SOX Compliance

• What Is HIPAA And How To Become HIPAA Compliant

• What Is SOC 2 And How To Become SOC 2 Compliant

• What Is The ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management Standard

Conclusion

Outsourcing IT management or tasks to MSPs is not just about cutting costs. When utilized well, MSPs can also enhance an organization’s innovation capacity by providing operational relief, access to expertise, flexibility, and rapid scalability.

Managed IT Service Providers, like Jones IT, are essential partners in driving successful IT transformations in medium and large enterprises. We bring the expertise, tools, and extensive experience needed to modernize infrastructure, enhance security, and streamline operations. By aligning IT strategies with business goals, we not only help reduce costs but also position companies to adapt to future technological advancements and better respond to market changes.

Is your organization looking to enhance productivity, efficiency, and innovation? Click the button below to reach out to us to learn how we can help your organization achieve its technology and business goals.