A growing business can experience a lot of speed bumps along the way. It’s a rite of passage for many business owners, managers, and their employees. The path to growth is not always a smooth one. However, there are ways to help flatten out those speed bumps and amplify the true potential of any business. This is done with managed services.
Managed services take important core processes of a business and offload them to an experienced third-party provider that specializes in that area. A managed services provider can take on everything from document management, to print management, to IT services. This allows business to focus on the things that they can control and affect when it comes to growing the business, while passing off other tasks to professional managed services providers.
Over a third of small businesses have already made this important change. Here are a few ways that managed services can help unlock the true power of a business.
Enable Employees to be Productive
Businesses spend a lot of time, energy, and money on hiring the right employees to help them achieve their goals. These employees are typically hired for a specific job or duty. Unfortunately, in many businesses, employees are bogged down with additional tasks that fall outside their job description. Even something as simple as troubleshooting the printer, ordering new supplies, or calling around to find a repair professional can be an enormous waste of time for a valuable employee.
Managed services take on these tasks that can waste time and bog staff down. The professionals are available at any hour to address the needs of the business and let the staff focus on their jobs at hand.
Predictable Costs
Budgets are important in any business. For a small business that’s in the growth phase, a budget is the difference between success and shutting the doors. Managed services can help businesses better control their costs to provide more stability when it comes to the budgeting side of things.
Generally, managed services are paid with a predetermined monthly fee. This provides cost certainty and can be scaled as the needs of the business change. The service contract clearly defines what is included and businesses can feel confident their needs are covered. A print management agreement, for example, could include regular maintenance and repair helping protect businesses from surprise costs.
Most importantly, these costs are scalable with the business. As IT needs grow, the managed IT services agreement can grow with those needs. This is in stark contrast to having to hire new in-house IT staff to handle the increased workload. A new IT employee would require a salary, benefits, and more. All of this can prove to be a significant cost that is not as predictable as what managed services can provide.
Get Business Continuity
One of the greatest challenges with running a business is that when an employee leaves, their knowledge goes with them. Of course, this is a reality of any business and can’t be eliminated entirely. However, some of the areas where business continuity is especially important, like IT services, can be handled by a managed services provider with ongoing processes and standards that don’t change regardless of employee turnover.
When it comes to managed IT services, for example, having that continuity can prove to be invaluable. When an in-house IT professional leaves, there is time spent to onboard and train a replacement. They may have different experiences and training which creates changes in the organization that can trickle down outside of the IT department. Managed services provide certainty that the processes will always be followed.
The Power of a Team
Whether it’s print management, managed IT, or document management; when a business chooses managed services they get the power of a team working for them as opposed to hiring a single individual to work in-house. This helps ensure there is no downtime when those services are needed most. Professionals are on-hand to take a call whenever help is needed, there is no void left behind when someone goes on vacation, and having the perspective of a few minds is always better than one.
Businesses often create teams within their own operations, like a sales team for example. Why not also have a team providing managed services to get that same level of performance?
Amplify Business with Managed Services
Managed services can help take any business to the next level by enabling productivity, ensuring costs, maintaining continuity, and providing a team of professionals to tackle the job. See the difference managed services can make for your business. Contact the business experts at CDS Office Technologies today.
