Where Can Savings Be Made With Managed Services?
Deciding whether or not to outsource any element of your business nearlyalways, in the end, boils down to a question of costs. Whether that’s the cost of your time, resources, staff or hard cash, the question is essentially the same – will my business feel the benefits if I outsource a segment of its workload? In an attempt to answer this with regards to managed services, there are many things to bear in mind – so let’s take a look at what they are, and then we’ll delve a little deeper into each item.
- 1. Time: Outsourcing some or all of your IT work will inevitably free up your time and your staff’s time to focus on more pressing business matters – such as serving customers.
- 2. Resources: You can immediately cut down on the volume of in‐house hardware that you will have to run, maintain, update and upscale as your business grows.
- 3. Money: Instead of employing a full time IT person or team, if you outsource this can prove to be a vital money‐saver, especially for SMEs running on tight margins. You will also negate the need at the outset to set yourself up with lots of expensive hardware.
- 4. Downtime: If your network goes down or your computers start to operate slowly, then you’re losing money every second. With the expertise of managed services, your hired help will be able to spot any potential hiccups in advance and prevent any problems before they occur.
Ok, so those are the 4 main areas where you can make significant savings with managed services. But, let’s delve a little deeper into each point so you know exactly where your savings are coming from. Saving Money With Managed Services.
Time.
It’s the way of the world today that, even if you’re a dedicated hardware store, technology will be the backbone of your company. It’s where you will be keeping all your customer files, your receipts, your order forms, invoices, payroll and all the rest. Put simply, there is a lot of valuable information that you will have stored on your computer system, and that system will need to be maintained.
As your business grows, so does the IT job in hand. All business owners are budget conscious – they have to be; we all know how tough IT is out there. And so, for many SMEs, IT simply isn’t possible for you or for your staff to be constantly ‘out the back’ working on computer maintenance when you all should be doing your utmost to promote and protect your business and bring on new clients. But, if you offload this time‐consuming work to expert professionals, not only can you rest assured that everything will be handled a lot more securely and routinely than perhaps you have the qualifications for yourself (you’re a business person, not a computer hacker, right?), then you will save yourself sample time to do the most important thing of all – grow your business.
Resources
By getting into managed services what you will probably be doing is getting into cloud computing as well. If you’re just starting up your business, then you will need a lot of hardware just to get off the ground – phone systems, a datacenter, computers possibly by the dozen with software for the lot of them. Stop right there. That bill is getting far too high already. Instead of storing all of these things in‐house, then you can turn to managed services who can utilize cloud technology at an affordable rate to take care of all of this for you. From VoIP systems to cloud storage and software – managed services can find your business the right solution that will be cost effective and scalable, as well as managing all of the risk and overseeing all of the maintenance for you. It’s a smart move for a smart SME.
Money
If you want to hire your own in‐house IT team, then the chances are that, although they might very well be reasonably versed in some aspects of technology, IT will be nothing compared to the expertise that you will be able to access by going with the dedicated IT and tech aficionados that make up a managed services team.
Managed service providers live for technology. They are always up to date with all the latest malware threats and take pride in staying ahead of them. Managed services can either supplement your in‐house IT team, or serve as the whole
team themselves if that better suits your budget.
Downtime
Every time your business goes offline, you’re leaking money, and that is unacceptable. You won’t necessarily have the time or even the expertise to preempt a problem or a malware strike before IT actually occurs – but your managed services team will.
They will routinely scan your network and all of your computers to ensure that they are completely free from viruses, malware, spyware, and are always operating at their full capacity. This means that your business will always be fully functioning, up to date and up to speed for all of your clients. Are you thinking about managed services? Get in touch with us here at V&C Solutions, and we’ll find the right the right package for you.
