Managed IT support services can help you relieve various business challenges, such as increasing efficiency and profitability, while allowing you to scale and minimize human resource challenges. To help you understand how this can be achieved, we have written this article explaining how IT support services can help you achieve these business goals. Read through the article below to learn more.
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1. Operational Efficiency
A managed IT support service company can improve your business’ operational efficiency when the following are implemented:
a. Proactive Technology Management
Proactive managed IT support services improve your business’ operational efficiency by monitoring your IT infrastructure, detecting system issues before they occur, and proactively addressing them with minimum to no business disruption. As a result, fewer incidents happen randomly, drastically reducing business downtime.
“Good managed IT support service companies manage the infrastructure; the infrastructure doesn’t manage them.”
b. Service Level Agreement
A service level agreement (SLA) is a legally binding contract that obligates a provider to meet specific service standards for a client. In the managed IT support service industry, these service standards are intended to guarantee the customer that if an unintended incident occurs, it will be prioritized correctly, escalated, and resolved in a minimum and reasonable amount of time.
It is crucial to remember that most SLAs are the best efforts, as no one can guarantee a resolution time for complex issues. Nevertheless, an excellent way to discern between a good managed IT support service company and a bad one is to look for the inclusion of an SLA in their service offer.
c. Escalation Process
Another critical process a well-managed IT support service company must have is a proper escalation process. This process ensures that incidents are timely and properly escalated to the right engineer to resolve the technology incident promptly. This process is often an integral part of the SLA and helps to speed up the resolution time, thus restoring the affected business operation as early as possible.
As we have seen, combining a proactive technology management approach, a service level agreement, and a proper escalation process has a proportional and direct impact on business productivity and efficiency.
2. Profitability and Financial Health
Managed IT support services can also help you boost your business’s profitability and, as a result, improve the company’s financial health. Here’s how:
a. Significant Cost Savings
Managed IT support services deliver almost the same service levels or even better than an in-house IT engineer, but at a lower cost. This is possible because they can increase productivity by minimizing workforce downtime (idle technicians) while controlling/stabilizing their costs. In other words, they achieved significant cost savings through economies of scale.
To provide some perspective, for less than the cost of a full-time in-house IT engineer, you can have a full-time specialized IT team (Help Desk, Network, Server, VoIP Engineers) in your hands.
For a visual representation of the potential cost savings, you can find below a graph that compares the cost of full-time in-house IT personnel versus a managed IT support service company. For this comparison, we assumed in-house IT personnel with an average salary of $50,000/year (although it can cost up to $83,510/year, as per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics) versus a managed IT support service company with an average cost of $27,060/year. In both scenarios, we assumed an infrastructure composed of 25 desktops/laptops, 5 network devices, and 3 servers.
Average Yearly Cumulative Cost of Managed IT Support Services vs. One In-House IT Personnel
b. Cost Elasticity
In addition to cost savings, managed IT support services allow your business to enjoy cost elasticity. This means if your company is to grow or shrink tomorrow, the cost of IT management will also grow or shrink simultaneously. Having this elasticity helps companies avoid under or over-allocation of resources, which can affect the service quality (under-allocation) or the business’s profitability (in the case of over-allocation).
When solely relying on in-house IT personnel, this cost elasticity is out of the door as shrinking or expanding the IT workforce would be limited. Often, companies use a hybrid method of IT personnel and managed IT support services to exploit the benefits of both approaches.
3. Scalability
In terms of scalability, managed IT support service companies have the capabilities to scale up IT support and engineering as needed. These companies have the industry expertise and personnel muscles to deploy manpower and execute technology projects/technical support as needed.
Not only can they internally scale in terms of human resources and effective execution, but they can also tap into established networks of consultants and recruitment agencies. The combination of internal and external scaling capabilities allows them to expand and execute at the speed of light, compared to companies solely relying on internal IT departments. In the age of technology, where things are changing fast and frequently, having effective scalability and timely execution is a competitive advantage that you want to count on.
4. Talent Recruitment/Retention
Lastly, IT talent recruitment and retention are critical aspects that managed IT support services can help with. Often ignored by companies outside the IT industry, recruitment and retention of good IT personnel can be extremely challenging. This is because good IT personnel are in high demand and, as a result, are difficult to find and retain (often, they get multiple offers with all kinds of perks). We must remember that money is often not the most important variable in the equation for good IT support personnel and engineers. Other factors, such as working with the latest technologies, a good engineering team, and a technology-driven company, make all the difference in the world.
The factors mentioned above are certain for a managed IT support service company. Partnering with such a company would alleviate or eliminate most of the talent recruitment and retention challenges.
Summary
To conclude, managed IT support services can considerably improve business efficiency and profitability. For the same or less than the cost of an in-house IT engineer, you can improve your business’ operational efficiency, profitability, and scalability and redirect your limited resources to more critical aspects.
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