4 Ways Managed Services Can Take Your Business to the Next Level
Managed services are becoming increasingly popular, but are they worth it? Whether you are a small business with limited I.T. resources or a large enterprise with a full staff, managed services can help take your business to the next level. Four unique elements take managed services from being a simple buzz word to a proven business solution.
publish date: May 3, 2016
Managed services are becoming increasingly popular, but are they worth it? Whether you are a small business with limited I.T. resources or a large enterprise with a full staff, managed services can help take your business to the next level. Four unique elements take managed services from being a simple buzz word to a proven business solution.
Consistency
One Fixed Subscription Price.
Instead of riding the roller coaster of fluctuating costs that come with monitoring, patching, and other maintenance, you can now have a fixed price for those needs. Managed services allows you to know the price you will be paying for items delivered under the scope of the agreement. Having this stability allows you the opportunity to think beyond the monthly budget and on to other projects and priorities.
Free Up IT for Strategic Opportunities.
People tend to think of technology as just an expense far too frequently. In truth, technology can make your business more efficient and competitive; if leveraged correctly. Managed services allows you to transfer important but time consuming tasks to the provider. This way, instead of putting out fires, your I.T. can focus on leveraging resources to help your business be more efficient and competitive and turn that expense into an investment.
Monitor
Peace of Mind.
With 24/7/365 monitoring of your systems, manages services are able to identify and remediate issues before they even become issues. For example. If a hard drive becomes too full, it can crash your server. Managed services can monitor these systems and automatically alert your provider who can take action to prevent those crashes from happening. It is much more cost efficient to take care of a problem before it becomes an emergency. Managed services works behind the scenes to ensure uptime for your employees and keeps you focused on running your business instead of dealing with IT issues as they arise.
Support
Professional Help.
It’s reassuring to know that the technical support you entrust to your managed service provider are typically items they see every day because that they do that for a living. Any challenge you have; chances are managed service providers have done that job many times and perfected it. It is also reassuring to know that many providers will have multiple people in each technical role which helps insulate your company by providing redundancy in each position. That way, if someone is on vacation, gets sick, or leaves the company, there are others who can step in and provide technical support.
Documentation.
Renewals are an aspect of managing your technology that businesses often don’t take into account. There is a process for renewing your support renewals and warranties that many managed service providers can assist with. They also often provide asset management services that can automatically inventory everything on your network and provide you with a holistic list. A good provider will also keep track of every trouble ticket, every resolution, and all interactions with your business.
Feedback
Expert Strategy.
With managed services, you have a provider who is constantly gathering data that can be used to really take your business to the next level. Monthly executive reports and quarterly business reviews are excellent tools that managed service provider’s use to give businesses a clear view of the status of your technology and the best strategy moving forward.
As technology grows, the demand for a competitive I.T. system grows too. What was enough five years ago, just isn’t anymore. That’s why managed services has become increasing popular. They’ve become a legitimate solution for businesses of all kinds to get to that next level of efficiency. Companies need a way to operate faster and that is an element that managed services offers. It’s important to find the provider that is right for your business and allows you to use the managed services to their full potential.