September 13, 2021 | Blog
Using managed services can make your life easier, whether you are a seasoned IT professional or a business owner.
When it is effectively executed, a managed service (MS) allows you to gain the capability of a whole IT department including the experience of seasoned professionals who can deliver focused application operations to your business application users.
So, how could managed services benefit your business?
What is a managed service?
Gartner defines a managed service provider as someone who “delivers services, such as network, application, infrastructure and security, via ongoing support and active administration on customers’ premises.”
In this way, managed services can:
- Allow your IT department to focus on more strategic IT programmes
- Free up your teams to focus on the core competencies of your business
- Provide more capability to your business end-users
How to decide if you need managed services or not
IT managers today are under increasing pressure to meet the operational expectations, performance and security needs of businesses – while keeping costs as low as possible. In these circumstances, the most logical thing to do would be to switch to something known as a predictable cost model i.e. a managed service model.
Companies that provide such services, like ebb3, are known as Managed Service Providers – and we can help you to deploy new services to your IT environment and set future strategic goals.
You may find more and more that many of your existing employees are not able to maintain new applications or services as they are not experienced with new technologies. In this case, you could consider hiring contractors to provide the service instead, but this can be costly and provide you with less value when it comes to supporting your business performance goals.
Managed service models, such as ebb3’s Fix, Improve and Transform process, have evolved over time and we have perfected its delivery. Managed services are therefore effective for any business that:
- Does not have sufficiently trained employees or the time to deal with proper maintenance, repairs and updates
- Rely on their IT infrastructure to support their daily business operations
- Want to pay a monthly, flat fee for services that provide their business with a high level of service quality
For most businesses, IT is the part that underpins the rest of the business. From hardware to software, and the associated required skills to keep the business running, it is easy to see how some businesses end up investing significant capital in building and maintaining their in-house IT support staff.
However, using a managed service can offer businesses greater IT cost predictability – especially when it comes to shifting to the cloud and virtualisation.
What are the benefits of managed services?
Managed services offer companies a variety of benefits, including:
- Better cost control. Companies can decide how much to scale their investment based on factors such as the CIO’s strategic vision and finance.
- Future-proofing of IT services.
- Higher availability, efficiency and productivity. Clients using a managed service tend to experience better performance with minimal downtime.
- Improved risk management. Managed service providers assume and manage much of the risk of the company it is serving due to its specific industry knowledge and adherence to best practices.
If you are embarking on the digital transformation of your business, consider taking advantage of ebb3’s managed service offering to help you stay on top of your business IT needs and minimise risks.