As business leaders focus on workplace modernization through digital transformation, the argument for having a managed IT services partner has never been more compelling. The right managed IT partner can help you achieve your goals without compromising security or operational efficiency.
Managed IT providers offer a necessary partnership to organizations that need to minimize risk, optimize efficiency, and overcome obstacles, such as talent shortages. The benefits of managed IT services include improved compliance, strengthened security, and superior backup-and-recovery solutions.
Why Do We Need Managed Services?
Managed services provide peace of mind for your business. In addition to obtaining access to an entire team of IT experts, you get a partner who makes sure your technology is sufficient enough to meet your business goals. If your organization has been thinking about workplace modernization through digital transformation, consider these benefits of managed IT services to help you achieve your goals.
Benefits of Managed IT Services
Whether your organization is a government agency or a nonprofit with a clear mission, or a business whose primary goal is profitability, you answer to stakeholders who expect you to demonstrate efficient use of resources and meet goals. One of the most impactful ways to improve profitability is through increased operational efficiency – and one of the best ways to improve operational efficiency is through the proper leveraging of managed IT services. The benefits are extensive.
Experts at the Ready to Help You Grow
Even companies with internal IT staff are often taxed beyond their capabilities in their efforts to keep up with demands – from monitoring for risks to ensuring compliance to keeping up with necessary patching – it can be overwhelming to have the responsibilities without the support necessary to stay ahead of the demands. In many organizations, the designated IT person actually has another role on top of their IT responsibilities, making it impossible for them to really meet the needs of the organization’s IT objectives. Managed IT services provide your organization access to the most experienced minds in IT without the added expense of another employee. For companies too small to have their own IT department, as well as mid-size and larger organizations that cannot justify the cost of a full-time C-level addition to their teams, an MSP can act as their IT department, work as an extension of their existing IT team, provide strategy consultation, and function as the CIO.
Proactive Action
When you wait for network processes to slow down or for something to go wrong with your IT infrastructure, you are forced into a costly cycle of repairs that prevents you from investing and getting ahead. When you work with an MSP, they constantly monitor the state of your infrastructure and network, heading off issues and replacing equipment before it stops your business from operating.
Levelled Playing Field
SMEs are expected (by their customers and other stakeholders) to maintain the same level of security and governance as their larger counterparts. That can be nearly impossible to achieve without an MSP, which forces SMEs to stretch their budgets and manage the costs involved with meeting compliance and reporting requirements and providing the security necessary to ease customers’ minds.
24/7/365 Monitoring
24/7 monitoring can minimize the risks and help you stay one step ahead of hackers. Having a team of IT professionals on call 24/7 to provide you with the right IT support, products, and services does more than just offer added protection – it gives you peace of mind.
Managed Risk
Being in business is inherently risky, and the global environment has made risk an even larger part of the business equation. One of the benefits of managed IT is the ability to mitigate a large portion of your risk by putting your compliance, IT security, and data security in the hands of experts. By partnering with an outsourced service, you shift the risk away from your business.
Compliance
Dental and medical offices, legal firms, and most other organizations have some level of regulatory guidelines with which they must comply. Compliance and security go hand in hand and having a team well-versed in providing the security that protects your data can help you avoid a costly data breach that can put you out of business.
Working with a Managed IT Partner Can Improve Growth and Success
An MSP frees you to focus on building your business, growing your brand, making sales, and cultivating clients – all while knowing that behind the scenes, your IT infrastructure is humming like a well-oiled machine. Managed IT can help you:
Focus on Growth
Organizations that are forced to be both experts in their industries, as well as IT experts, are often unable to successfully focus on either area adequately. Working with a managed IT team can:
- Increase uptime for better customer service.
- Ensure timely updates to software for better security.
- Improve competitiveness and increase speed to market.
- Increase budget flexibility.
- Improve efficiency and productivity to allow for innovation.
- Improve your ability to attract strong talent.
Attract Strong Talent
Attracting talent in today’s tough and competitive environment is more difficult than ever. It’s not just IT talent that’s hard to find; but acquiring and retaining skilled talent in every area of business has become and ongoing challenge. With a robust IT infrastructure and a well-planned IT strategy, you can attract stronger talent by offering more workplace flexibility and demonstrating your ability to stand apart from the crowd by offering innovative and cutting-edge technology and tools for your employees.
Support Innovation
If your organization is always putting out fires, worrying whether or not your server will crash or that someone will click on the wrong link, you simply don’t have the brain space to be innovative. When your business is functioning at peak efficiency, you and your team have time to think creatively and develop solutions that give you a competitive edge.
Deliver Excellent Customer Service
When your customers call, they expect you to answer.
When they visit your offices, they expect you to be there.
But more than that, they expect you to be able to provide whatever service they need from you.
Your customers aren’t expecting you to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. We can’t do that today. Our network is down.”
They don’t want to hear, “You’ll have to come back another day; we can’t access our customer information.”
And they certainly do not want to get a phone call from you saying, “Sorry, but you will want to monitor your finances for the next month. We’ve just lost all of your personal information to hackers.”
No, your customers rightfully expect that you will always be available, up and running, and diligently working to protect the information They’ve entrusted to you.
When you consider ways to improve customer service for your company, you may not consider IT support or Managed Services.
More likely, you focus on hiring more people, increasing the amount of training you do and placing emphasis on development.
But one of the easiest ways to improve customer service is to ensure that you are available when your customers need you and that they can trust you enough to continue providing you with the information you need to remain effective.
The IT – Customer Connection
Managed IT services, while on its face an IT support solution, is really a phenomenal customer service tool.
Managed Services are IT support services designed to proactively manage your network, to optimize performance and enhance security.
Your network is monitored every day, with behind-the-scenes experts intercepting and addressing problems before they impact your customers, reducing downtime and enhancing security measures to keep your business operational and your customer data safe.
How Do Managed Services Benefit My Customers?
As rapidly as technology is changing today, it’s no wonder companies feel overwhelmed trying to keep up, even when they do have internal IT staff. It’s almost impossible for a company that doesn’t specialize in IT to keep up with cloud-based services and software, asset management, cybersecurity, mobile device security, data security, and data management. And we live in a time when it can mean loss of income or closure to a business if something does go wrong – customers won’t wait for a company to right itself when there’s a competitor around the corner who can meet their needs.
- Services can be customized to meet the needs of your business and customer base.
- Services are proactive, not reactive, so the focus is on prevention, which saves time and money.
- The cost of IT support is shifted to a more predictable and plannable expense.
- You enjoy peace of mind and give your customers more confidence since you’re never making excuses or putting them at risk.
Can Managed Services Reduce Total IT Cost?
The capital costs of owning your own servers, paying for the utilities to keep servers cool, and replacing infrastructure when a server breaks can be unpredictable and costly. Add to that the necessity of employing IT staff to manage your onsite infrastructure, and the burden it places on your organization to be compliant and secure, it becomes easy to see that one of the big benefits of managed IT services is the cost savings.
Shifting to managed IT services often makes sense, from both a cost perspective and a customer experience perspective. But having a managed IT services provider to partner with you and navigate all of the complexities securely and efficiently can ensure that your IT strategy is aligned with your business.
From having to hire fewer internal IT support people to having a plannable, predictable monthly expense, an MSP is an investment with a measurable ROI. You gain access to state-of-the-art equipment, technology, and talent but without the associated costs. Managed services allow your organization to remain locally, regionally, and globally competitive while still reducing your IT spending by:
Reducing Infrastructure Costs
Better infrastructure allows you to:
- Provide a better customer experience.
- Reduce overall IT expenditures for the long-term.
- Improve security.
Consolidating 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, cloud-based 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.
Making IT Predictable with Fixed IT Costs
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.
The cost of managing and maintaining servers is more than just about money – it’s about downtime, too.
Partnering with a managed IT firm allows you to convert the costs of your IT to a fixed monthly cost, such as a utility, making it easier to plan and develop a long-term strategy for your organization and ensuring that you’re up and running without fail.
How Much Do Managed IT Services Cost?
Managed IT services are customized to meet the needs of your organization. Because the service is a fixed-rate cost, you can better plan growth, talent investment, and marketing, as well as other business costs, knowing that your managed IT service is covered.
What Is Included in Managed Services?
There are a variety of solutions included in managed IT services. The ITeam provides Alberta businesses with award-winning service and access to the best IT experts in the industry. Services include:
Email security: Email security protocol is customized for your business, using the latest security technology.
Disaster recovery: We work to understand your needs, to develop customized backup and recovery solutions.
Asset management and preventative maintenance: We keep your team working efficiently and ensure updated licensing and software patching, firmware updates, application updates, and more.
Backup management: We help manage the unique compliance requirements in healthcare, oil and gas, accounting, legal, and more.
Unlimited support: We provide remote and onsite support and maintenance services for identified devices, regular business hour and emergency 24×7 support, and 24×7 monitoring.
Virtual CIO: As your strategic partner, we help you align your technology with your business strategy and successfully plan the future.
Comprehensive reporting
Shifting to managed IT services often makes sense, from both a cost perspective and a customer experience perspective. But having a managed IT services provider to partner with you and navigate all of the complexities securely and efficiently can ensure that your IT strategy is aligned with your business.
Whether you are a healthcare firm, an oil and gas company, a legal firm, or a part of the many other industries The ITeam supports, such as construction and accounting, organizations can benefit from managed cloud hosting services. The ITeam is committed to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses develop proactive, cost-effective IT strategies that minimize risk and maximize efficiency.
How The ITeam Helps Calgary Organizations with Managed IT
The ITeam’s Managed IT Services are designed to meet the needs of businesses in a variety of industries in Calgary. We act as a virtual CIO, partnering with our clients to help them meet their business goals and remain globally competitive. We assess their requirements, reviewing everything from network security, systems, and application patching to comprehensive backup and recovery services. We provide fully managed and personalized services designed to meet the needs of virtually any business.
Our team will work with you to customize a cost-effective solution and help you develop a comprehensive IT security strategy that will help you survive any threat, whether natural or man-made. A managed service approach will also provide businesses with comprehensive security, customized backup and recovery solutions, and state-of-the-art cloud storage and hosting. Are you ready to take advantage of the many benefits of partnering with an MSP? Contact us today. The benefits of managed IT services and partnering with an MSP are quantifiable. Not only can you measurably reduce risk and improve efficiency, but you can do so with a predictable, plannable monthly cost that is scalable as you grow. Contact us to learn more.