Managed Services is a term that makes absolutely no sense – unless you are in the IT industry. Managed Services is fully outsourced IT that takes care of all the headaches you normally associate with technology. Basically, if it is IT-related, Managed Services can make it better.
Technology changes at a lightning-fast pace. Technical marvels have increased productivity and collaboration but keeping up with the evolving landscape can be both challenging and time-consuming.
Just like larger companies, small businesses need technology to operate efficiently and to compete effectively. But as reliance on IT grows, the resources needed to support this increasingly complex IT environment may not. In many small businesses, IT resources are limited and can be quickly overwhelmed. Additionally, as a business grows, its IT requirements will inevitably change. Allowing us to shoulder some of the responsibility can help reduce and control costs, increase efficiency and competitiveness, and provide scalability.
Managed services are also a philosophical change in the way that a business deals with its technology. Instead of following the old-school tradition of break-fix, meaning wait until the server, desktops or other critical networking devices fail, then scramble to fix them, a business operating with managed services focuses on the prevention of these issues before they disrupt employees, management and/or clients.
If you fall behind in keeping up with things such as backups, patches and security, the odds greatly increase that you’ll face an IT outage or another problem down the road that will negatively impact your business. For instance, if your Email server, customer relationship management system, financial application or network goes down, you will likely face substantial productivity and revenue losses as a result.
A break-fix maintenance service fixes problems as they crop up. This means that something needs to go wrong before you receive any service, resulting in an inevitable reduction in IT system performance while you wait for the problem to be fixed.
Today, no business can really afford the risk and uncertainty of relying on a “Break-fix maintenance service” because your business is too dependent on having a reliable IT system. In addition, having separate suppliers responsible for different parts of the system puts you in the difficult position of trying to decide who should be delivering the service you require.
Surprisingly most managed services cost less than traditional break-fix services, especially when including the true cost of downtime. Remote monitoring, remote maintenance and the prevention of major issues allow a managed services program to be more efficient than just relying on a break-fix situation to keep things running.
