Today I have the opportunity to tell you about the wonders & joys of managed services. First, what are managed services? Ultimately, managed services are the outsourced, proactive management of your stuff. In this case, we’re talking about your technology. A good provider will give you time back to focus on the fun parts of your job and save you money. That sounds good, right? Time, fun & money?
First, let’s talk about time.Managed Services Providers offer proactive monitoring, speedy resolution of issues, regular reporting, and good communication, which won’t only provide peace-of-mind, but will also offload a number of time-consuming tasks. Many IT teams have to spend time going through logs, troubleshooting small issues, or spending long hours on tech-support calls. What if you could offload all those tasks, giving your team more time to check out the newest technologies and focus on improving your business instead of struggling to merely keep it running?
Now that you’ve freed up some time, let’s talk about fun. Why did you get into IT to begin with? For me, it’s because technology is fun. I love learning about new tech, and once I learn about it, I have so much fun putting something new in place that contributes to my business. If you’re spending less time on maintenance, you have more time for that kind of fun! If you were in the middle of setting up a new automated process that was going to save a bunch of people a ton of time, the last thing you’d want to stop for is to find out why there’s an alert on one of your infrastructure devices. Wouldn’t it be great if instead of someone asking you why there’s an alert, you had a managed service provider that proactively checked your environment on your behalf? It might look more like an email telling you when an alert first started, what the likely cause is, an option or two on how to address it, and a suggested time that it could be addressed for you. Now instead of stopping what you’re doing to look into it, you’d have all the facts and even the option of just replying to an email to have it fixed for you. Back to the fun!
That brings us to money. Good IT teams earn good salaries, and they’re worth every penny. Imagine if you were to take away even a portion of the interruptions from your staff’s day. How much more productive could they be, and how much more value would you get out of their salaries? Not to mention productive employees are usually happy employees that stay in their job and don’t cost you to retrain replacements. If you were to ask each of your IT staff how much time they spend on maintenance in a week, there will typically be one of 2 reactions to their answers. First, “Is that really enough time to catch things early & reduce failures?” Or second, “No wonder it takes you so long to get anything else done!”. Either way, device failures cost money and your employees’ time costs money.
Managed Services can give you time back by taking on some of the time-consuming tasks, freeing up time to focus on improving your business with technology (have fun at work), and save you money by utilizing their expertise to catch early warning signs before there are issues. I would hazard a guess that a good Managed Service offering would cost less than a new hire as well. What would you have to lose by investing a year to see what a team of IT professionals could bring to your environment for less than the cost of a full-time employee?
Written By: Ryan Alibrando, Service Delivery Manager for LookingPoint, Inc.