Archive for category: Managed IT

The Benefits of Flat Rate IT Services

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The Benefits of Flat Rate IT Services

Before Managed Service providers became a common resource, an organization was faced with calling in a tech service provider every time something went wrong with the IT infrastructure.

This usually required paying charges based on the hourly rate of the technician and the cost of the equipment necessary to make the repairs.

And until the service call was made, there was no way to know how much it would cost to get the network back up and running.

An organization could be quite literally held hostage to exorbitant costs because without the repairs, they were unable to service their customers.

Those unpredictable costs, however, meant that managers on tight budgets would often wait to call, avoiding the issue until it was unavoidable, thereby making the costs even higher.

Today, Calgary and Alberta businesses who work with The ITeam benefit from flat-rate, fixed-cost IT services in a variety of ways.

Predictable Repair Costs

One of the biggest benefits of a flat-rate IT department is predictability.

Rather than pay an hourly rate to a technician, or suffer an unknown cost for equipment replacement costs, the organization pays a monthly fee that doesn’t change, regardless of how often services are required.

That predictability allows the organization to operate in confidence, knowing that their own customers will not be without some level service.

Better Planning

For the organization that is trying to remain competitive, agile, and capable of continued growth, turning IT costs into a predictable, monthly utility cost instead of a capital expense is significant.

Not only can you avoid unexpected capital expenditures during your fiscal year, so that you can invest in growth, marketing, and other business needs, but you can also plug IT into your budget with confidence.

Many organizations who use a flat-rate IT service are able to not only have more money for investing in attracting talent and growing their organization but also are able to have access to better, more customized IT solutions.

Flexibility

As we have seen here in Alberta, we’re all impacted by the economic downturn.

But one of the benefits of flat-rate IT is scalability. If your business grows quickly, you can handle that growth by scaling up your services. I

f you lose a big contract and need to tighten your budget, you can likewise scale back your services as needed.

Reduced Downtime

Hiring a flat-rate IT department to provide support to your infrastructure reduces downtime.

Downtime costs you and your business, not only in dollars but in loyalty.

Managers with tight budgets are more likely to call for help when they need it because they know the cost will not change, and the organization experiences less overall downtime as a result.

As well, your flat-rate IT service provider is motivated to keep everything running in peak condition to make sure you don’t have to call them unexpectedly.

The main benefit of flat-rate IT services is to your bottom line.

When your organization no longer has to worry about unpredictable IT bills costs, while at the same time increasing the reliability and functionality of your systems, it’s easier to focus on other aspects of the business that keeps you competitive.

At the same time, you have a team of experts – a strategic partner – to work with you to ensure you are able to leverage technology in ways that strengthen your organization and improve your ability to meet your customers’ needs.

The ITeam is dedicated to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses remain competitive, flexible, and ready to face whatever challenges come their way. We do this by providing essential IT support and customized services designed to meet the needs of your business. The ITeam will work with you to develop a cost-effective and comprehensive flat-rate IT strategy that will help you thrive. Contact us for a free consultation.

4 Ways To Reduce IT Spending

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4 Ways To Reduce IT Spending

Organizations will spend more than $3.5 trillion on IT in 2016.

By 2020 that number will be even higher.

Even with economic slowdowns, Brexit, and other events impacting IT spending, most organizations are being forced to spend more than ever to keep up with security, infrastructure, and the race to the cloud.

So how do you remain globally competitive while still reducing your IT spending?

Take these four steps to save money while also increasing the efficiency and security of your IT infrastructure:

1. Implement server virtualization

Gartner predicts that server workloads will be 86-percent virtualized by the end of 2016.

While any business can benefit from virtualization, small and mid-size companies with smaller IT budgets or no in-house IT departments can realize tremendous savings from server virtualization.

How?

Fewer hardware means:

  • Lower lease or capital investment costs
  • Energy savings
  • Leased space cost savings

2. Infrastructure updates

It might seem counterintuitive to invest in new equipment to save money, but the cost savings from reduced downtime and maintenance expenses must be considered.

If you have outdated equipment or software, you not only run the risk of downtime impacting your ability to serve your customers, but you may also realize a much higher risk of a security breach as well.

Better infrastructure allows you to:

  • Provide a better customer experience
  • Reduce overall IT expenditures for the long-term
  • Improve security

3. Consolidate systems

If you haven’t yet done so, for purposes of security and cost savings, it’s time to let go of your legacy systems and consolidate everything into a new, modern platform.

A legacy system is any system you still rely on that is outdated and barely held together by patches, is no longer supported by the vendor, or is difficult to maintain or support.

Legacy systems are an enormous security risk, so as you consider the cost of consolidating, be sure to consider the cost of not doing so.

Consolidating systems will:

  • Reduce risk
  • Reduce downtime
  • Improve efficiency

4. Make IT predictable

One of the most difficult challenges organizations of any size face is unplanned downtime or unplanned capital investments.

Money has to come from somewhere, and often it’s at the expense of customers.

Managed services provide your organization with:

  • A predictable and manageable IT cost
  • State-of-the-art security and monitoring
  • Off-site backup and recovery
  • Reduced downtime
  • Enterprise-grade applications and platforms
  • Customizable scalability
  • A monthly expense you can plan around each fiscal year

You can reduce your IT spending and still improve your security, efficiency, productivity, and cost.

The ITeam provides essential IT support to Calgary businesses, with fully managed and customized services designed to meet the needs of virtually any business. The ITeam will work with your Alberta business to customize a cost-effective solution and help you develop a comprehensive IT strategy that will help you survive economically stressful times. Contact us for a free consultation.

High-Value IT Can Be Cost Effective

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High-Value IT Can Be Cost Effective

Calgary companies are suffering from the economic downturn.

According to an article in Huffington Post Canada, so far in 2016, more than 4,000 businesses have closed.

It is predicted that more than 7,000 businesses will have shut down by the end of the year.

(That’s up from the 6,300 businesses that closed in 2015 and the 5,900 that closed in 2014).

Right now it’s tough to stay in business, let alone remain competitive, cost-effective, and growth-oriented.

One of the most difficult costs to control for businesses of any size is IT.

But often, the approach businesses take toward IT management is outdated and reactive.

Think about your IT strategy the way you would think about your own healthcare.

If you don’t go to your doctor for regular checkups, you aren’t spotting problems with your health as early as you could.

By the time you do detect something, it is more complicated, serious, and costly to treat than it would have been otherwise.

Preventative care is the key – for both your body and your IT infrastructure.

Don’t Wait for Disaster to Strike

While not every Calgary business that closed this year did so because of poor IT strategy, the numbers don’t lie: security breaches, cyber-attacks, and IT infrastructure failures have a measurable impact.

If these IT crises don’t shut your doors, they can certainly cost your organization both financially and in terms of lost business.

If you wait for disaster to strike before acting, the recovery will likely be much more costly (and the downtime far more devastating) than if you had been proactive.

You can save money and prevent costly breakdowns by employing a more proactive approach to managing your IT infrastructure.

The Doctor Is In

Managed IT services do for your IT systems what your physician does for your health.

They both provide a partner who knows you well enough to help you meet your goals while preventing disaster from occurring.

They both monitor your systems and immediately take action when things go wrong.

The right IT partner proactively manages your IT, preventing problems before they arise, and implements safeguards that minimize the extent of any problem that could occur, whether natural or manmade.

Embracing this approach is not only more cost-effective in the long run but is also more aligned with business goals and will help you survive the economic downturn.

Winter Is Coming

The approaching change of season can mean variations not only in the weather but in business as well.

Many businesses are faced with seasonal fluctuations in business because of the weather.

These volatile cycles can make planning difficult, and making costs predictable as possible can help you manage these changes in revenue more efficiently.

Managed Services helps make your IT costs predictable so that you can plan for seasonal fluctuations.

Making regular investments in IT infrastructure, thereby keeping servers, software licenses, and peripheral equipment up to date, can save your business a fortune in unforeseen emergency repairs and downtime.

It’s estimated that downtime costs businesses hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

More than the financial cost of downtime, however, is the cost of customer perception.

If you cannot effectively provide service to your customers or sell your products – or worse, your lack of infrastructure integrity results in the loss of customer date – you could quickly find yourself without a business to run.

The ITeam provides essential IT support to Calgary businesses, with fully managed and customized services designed to meet the needs of virtually any business.

The ITeam will work with your Alberta business to customize a cost-effective solution and help you develop a comprehensive IT strategy that will help you survive economically stressful times. Contact us for a free consultation.

IT Infrastructure Is Your Competitive Advantage

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IT Infrastructure Is Your Competitive Advantage

It’s a tough global economy no matter your industry, and remaining competitive is the challenge of every business leader.

While most of us think about competitive advantage as what we can do to better market our products or gain greater visibility to obtain market share, one of the most undervalued and relevant ways to gain – and keep – competitive advantage is through your IT infrastructure.

If your IT infrastructure doesn’t support your business goals and data needs, you will be unable to protect your data, respond to future growth quickly, and improve your efficiency.

IT Infrastructure and Customer Experience

Are you experiencing sluggish access to information?

Are you wrestling with appointment scheduling software that doesn’t efficiently manage your patient calendar?

Or are you realizing an inability to leverage from stored customer data to customize your services?

Having the right IT infrastructure contributes to improved customer service and better customer experience.

The proficiency of your IT infrastructure is a differentiator.

So if you have areas of your IT operations that you know are slowing you down, prioritize solving those issues.

How?

Invest in cloud-based solutions to improve network efficiency and processing speeds.

IT Infrastructure and Data Security

From central data centers to BYOD security to data storage, IT infrastructure plays a significant role in protecting data.

Addressing compliance issues (data retention, protection of patient data, reporting) and protecting proprietary company information through stronger data security not only provides you with a competitive advantage but also helps to avert risk.

IT Infrastructure and Innovation

The organizations that will remain globally competitive will be the ones that can respond to ever-changing economic, technological, and cultural environments with speed and finesse.

That can only occur if your infrastructure is strong enough to withstand rapid change and has been optimized for your business goals.

Infrastructure agility is the main ingredient in innovation; integrated systems, cloud-based business, and virtualization all contribute to better agility, creating the right IT culture for innovation.

IT Infrastructure and Collaboration

A better IT infrastructure can reduce silos – pockets of information or data that reside with one employee – within your organization, which often results in redundancy of both data and labour.

By improving your infrastructure with cloud-based data storage, information becomes accessible to all employees, who are then able to share information securely and are able to collaborate and communicate more effectively.

The organization is also able to retain the knowledge gained by individual employees even after they leave.

Your IT infrastructure can provide you with a competitive advantage.

Developing a proactive IT strategy will position your organization to be better able to serve customers, stand apart from competitors, and respond to change.

As technology fundamentally changes how we do business and how we serve customers, business leaders must reevaluate whether their current IT infrastructure is meeting their needs.

The ITeam is committed to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses identify and implement a customized IT infrastructure that keeps them competitive. Contact us to learn more

Reduce Business Costs with a Better IT Strategy

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Reduce Business Costs with a Better IT StrategyCanadian businesses of all sizes have been forced to adapt to major IT trends in order to remain competitive on a global scale.

Services such as cloud computing, mobile device management, big data, and IT security have transformed the way almost every industry manages their business.

Technology is a necessary part of virtually every industry, and IT is a bigger portion of nearly every business budget.

While large corporations can often absorb increasing IT costs, small and mid-size businesses struggle to stay up to speed with limited IT budgets.

Unfortunately, in today’s tight economy, large and small businesses alike must find ways to reduce costs.

Reduce Costs without Sacrifice

Most businesses are faced with the dilemma of needing to have access to robust IT infrastructure and support while at the same time being challenged to reduce their overall operating budgets.

According to recent research, cost reduction is one of the top priorities of all mid-market Canadian businesses in the coming year.

The only priority more important to these businesses?

IT security and risk management.

Rather than remaining mired in the doom and gloom of unenthusiastic economic predictions facing Canadian business leaders, savvy leaders are recognizing the opportunity that exists within the advancing technology, to be able to proverbially have their cake and eat it too.

Improved IT ROI

Advancements in technology allow businesses to increase agility and improve competitive advantage while simultaneously reducing costs and streamlining IT services.

Through the increased use of cloud services, which shifts the majority of the capital costs to managed services providers, many companies are realizing an increased ROI on IT investment.

They can then be used to enhance other services such as backup and disaster recovery, off-site data storage, and better mobile-device security management, ultimately resulting in improved operational efficiencies.

In other words, a small investment in IT can have a domino effect that results in bigger cost savings, better overall data security and protection, and significant increases in risk mitigation.

Best Practices for Efficient Operations

  • Move from capital expenditures in IT to predictable, plannable, operational expenditures, by shifting to cloud-based services, infrastructure, and management that is scalable and responsive.
  • Move from in-house IT staff to a virtual CIO who partners with your business to determine the most cost-effective, customized IT solutions.
  • Address IT and data security risks now, before they become costly losses.
  • Minimize the risks of downtime with automated, off-site backups of critical data.

Doing more with less.

That is the challenge every business leader is forced to achieve to remain viable.

A more comprehensive approach to IT management can give business leaders a roadmap, to not only survive tough economic times but thrive.

The economy will recover, but until it does, we’re dedicated to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses make changes now to remain competitive, flexible, and ready to face whatever challenges come their way. We do this by providing essential IT support and customized services designed to meet the needs of your business. The ITeam will work with you to develop a cost-effective and comprehensive IT strategy that will help you survive economically stressful times. Contact us for a free consultation.