When considering a break/fix model, multiple points of interest should be considered red flags for your finances. With break/fix, you have no control over your expenditure. Disaster strikes when you least expect, meaning you will have no time to plan out repair costs or maintenance options like you would with an MSP. Since a break/fix service needs disasters to happen for their services to be required, they are incentivized to take longer to fix a problem and make more callouts necessary. While they won’t actively sabotage you, they will take much longer than an MSP would to fix a solution.
A break/fix company isn’t invested in your network or digital infrastructure. They care about providing a solution to a problem, not investigating your system to find ways to prevent these problems from happening. Managed services regularly work to ensure the uptime of your network and keep outages to a minimum.
Finally, their repair times aren’t guaranteed. Since break/fix is an uncertain service, providers can’t give a staple estimate for repairs or maintenance. This causes long-term service outages and leaves you with a risk to revenue and reputation, depending on the case. With the preventative maintenance of managed services, downtime is minimal, and repair times are established beforehand, since they have a better understanding of your network.
With each of these points in mind, planning your IT expenses becomes much more straightforward when you work with a managed service provider. Break/fix is uncertain, expensive, and has little investment in your success beyond fixing issues. When setting up your IT strategic planning, consider working with an MSP to hinder ongoing problems and save you money over time.