Developing A Business Case For IT Management Services

Any managed services provider can promise, potential benefits will exist for businesses, who adopt an IT Managed Service Structure (MSS). But just as companies are all different, it does become challenging to predict the benefits each company will get without gaining a deep understanding of the individual organization first.

Looking back over the years, providing IT managed services, Centerpoint IT’s managed services experts have put together three typical examples where managed services do prove beneficial, after the initial examination and a good fit for a business.

Example 1: Reducing IT Complications

No one likes complications, of any kind. When it comes to IT complications, every company gets their fair share. There are numerous reasons why this happens. It could be lack of in-house IT staff, outdated equipment, or issues with the internet connection. But let’s say you lack sufficient IT staff.

Here’s the setup. You employ less than 100 people. Based on your calculations you only need and can afford one, maybe two in-house IT staff members. But you also checked with your other employees to see if any were “Tech Savvy.” For those that are, you let them take on ad-hoc IT roles, but only when it’s vital.

However, as your organization started to grow, and more IT problems begin to appear, the initial IT staffing approach? Well, that’s now proven to be a whole new set of complications.

• The first complication – you’ve discovered your staff only has access to specific skills. Their current knowledge did not keep up with technology changes and updates.
• The second complication – since the staff didn’t have ongoing training, they are making critical mistakes, leading to additional IT issues and downtimes.
• The third complication – employing contractors in an emergency to solve errors, concerns or problems, who are unfamiliar with your system, just got expensive and more complicated.

At this point, you now have a split decision complication. You know hiring a large set of IT staff is cost prohibitive. Meaning capital tied up in new salaries gets frowned upon, plus the risk of individuals failing to handle the next IT issue. Or looking outside the company to an MSP, who will take on the task of managing your IT infrastructure on a contract.

Now depending on the scope of your IT needs, having an added IT personnel would make good sense. Provided they get used often and earn the wages they’re paid. But if your IT needs are mostly low-grade with few major initiatives, then forego the salaries, an MSP becomes cost-effective and the way to go.

Example 2: Daily IT Management

Another primary driver for adopting managed services is offloading routine daily IT management tasks.

Here’s the setup. These activities such as patches, user help desk, adds, moves and changes do not require a high level of skill but are daily IT management for IT teams no matter the business. As a result, you’ve discovered your growth projects have halted. All due in part, because IT stays continuously preoccupied with keeping devices, the network and your security updated.

Here’s the rub. Your staff is managing two separate, coherent modes of IT delivery – one focused on stability, the other on agility.

• Delivery 1 – is traditional and sequential, emphasizing safety and accuracy.
• Delivery 2 – is exploratory and nonlinear, emphasizing agility and speed.

Do you see the difference? Rather than bring in the high salaried IT personnel to address Delivery 1, you pass that daily task over to your MSP. That leaves the in-house IT staff to tackle Delivery 2, which focuses primarily on business-enabling, revenue-driving digital transformation projects.

Example 3: Inviting the secure private cloud and new applications

Quite often businesses migrate to public clouds for convenience rather than investing is secure private cloud infrastructure.

Here’s the setup. Your business has over 100 employees, and it keeps getting brought up, numerous times, that you could transition to secure private cloud infrastructure to protect sensitive data. Instead, upper management only wants to outsource to public clouds because it’s working, and it’s convenient. The reason, “If it’s not broke, why fix it?”

We’ve seen ‘cloud value’ added when a business or organization has finally taken advantage of both public cloud economies and the security of the private cloud. It’s important to mention; managed cloud infrastructure does not stop with servers and storage – it also includes OS, databases and any other platform required in support of your computing environment.

Cloud applications are also becoming a more significant option providing more flexible, unlimited scalability, IT environments where employees can access information, communicate and collaborate from anywhere on any device privately.

We must also mention, customers should test cloud purchases with a small user group first, before moving ahead with full licensing. We bring this up because some clients buy more licenses that aren’t needed, and then never get used. By outsourcing cloud functions to an MSP, you can set budgetary limits while providing user access to an experienced IT Help Desk as part of a managed subscription service.

Furthermore, cloud software is currently in an evolutionary cycle; applications are continuously updated via patching and additional features, meaning that access to appropriate software versioning is paramount.

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