Starting an enterprise is now at the reach of almost everyone today, with increasing technological progress, connectivity and the increased availability of wider sources of funds from business loans to peer to peer and crowdfunding.
Keeping the company afloat, however, is another story. One which entrepreneurs need to plot well, and get right for a happy ending. One of the tools which can be used to aim for this Happy Ending is Managed Services. It might sound complicated and technical as a term, but is actually a simple means to keep your organization going. It is an umbrella term which regroups a range of IT related services, designed to offer small and medium businesses an opportunity to rise to the challenges they usually meet.
Indeed, the one-man-band IT Team no longer efficiently serves the purpose of organizations. The range of applications and software being used in an office today has increased exponentially and the good old days of “Have you tried turning it off and on again” are now past. The range of expertise needs to be much wider, with in-depth knowledge of plug-ins, add-ons and connectivity hacks. The IT infrastructure can literally make or break a business organization. The use of technology in the workplace goes much beyond keeping the IT infrastructure in check and extends to new areas such as data mining and analysis through income generation. The traditional office has also changed with employees working remotely and increased focus on delivery.
Managed Services, delivered by a Managed Services Provider (MSP), works better for SMBs in many ways. It prevents SMBs from adopting previous support models such as Break-Fix, where you wait for something to be broken to fix it and lagging behind in today’s fast-paced environment. As the saying goes, prevention is better than cure. MSPs start being efficient from the get-go and can be considered as the IT GPS that you need to get your business to its destination. Emerging areas such as security and compliance need the required attention which is not sometimes readily available in-house, making the case for Managed Services stronger. In fact, 70 percent of the businesses surveyed in Microsoft Store’s Small Business Insights Survey suggested they would prefer to pay for support in matters of cybersecurity, rather than do it themselves.
The right MSP will allow you to make long term savings for a short term investment. IT budgets include many items such as software and hardware costs and expenses, network infrastructure costs and maintenance costs, and other related costs. This approach provides better stability and lower business interruptions as organizational processes are monitored. And this can be done remotely. Managed Services are better for SMBs offering them efficiency and flexibility to focus on what they do best: their business. It will also allow the small and medium companies an opportunity to have greater access to new technologies which are trending in the market place and delivering in terms of results. For instance, SMBs can benefit from tailored remote monitoring and management software, new cloud-based back-up storage systems that are more SMB oriented, and business-grade, leading to less downtime, lower costs, and eventually greater profits.
Opting for Managed Services provides business owners and managers with reliable services, suited to the business needs in a professional manner, allowing them to focus more on what really matters – running their business, and greater peace of mind.