5 Reasons for Managed Services – Now!

A trusted managed services provider can help you focus on your business. In an unsettled time when you’re trying to do more work with less resources, managed services as a strategy could be the answer. Here’s a look at the what and why for managed services.

First, what are managed services?

It’s taking the load off your IT staff and putting them right on someone else. That is, you’re outsourcing selected functions to a managed service provider (MSP). MSPs offer the specialized skill set, flexibility and scalability to keep whatever system, platform or infrastructure you want, cloud or on-prem, going strong 24/7, 365.

So why are managed services more useful now than ever?

(1) Things have changed.

And by that we mean “the pandemic has created a paradigm shift to a new normal.” It’s very possible your company has lost IT staff. You’ve had to adjust your processes and procedures to accommodate people working remotely. You’re trying to do more “new normal” things with less people. It’s hard to scale up or down as needed. You feel like you’re losing control – you’re spinning plates on sticks, waiting for gravity to take its toll. So, give some of those plates and sticks to the MSP. They’re spinning plate specialists. And in the unlikely event they do drop a plate, it’s their job to clean it up and start spinning again, and you and your customers probably won’t know it’s even happened.   

(2) You have more important projects to do.   

The legacy systems you have are chugging along – but they need a lot of maintenance and updating to keep things running. You need your staff to be more strategic-minded and working on higher level, value-added projects, but it’s hard to do when they’re mired in the day-to-day. In fact, you’re probably experiencing higher than normal churn as staff moves on to more interesting places to work. Off load that boring work to the MSP and free up your staff for that more important work, like updating those legacy systems.

(3) You have a big, new shiny system – now what?

It’s the flip side of (2) above. To stay competitive your company has done its digital transformation, application modernization and systems integration. That’s a good thing. You and your IT staff teamed with the consultants as everyone decided what’s next and what’s best; you all helped the outside implementation firm get things up and running. Now the outside firms are gone. And you have to keep this brand-new machine going. You just don’t have the skill sets internally to keep up with it – and that’s not a slam against your staff. (We can’t all be Kupernetes experts.) The latest digital solutions can be highly specialized, and you’re not going to have people that specialized on your team working 24/7. But the MSP will.

(4) You want to get costs under control.

This applies to all the previous points above. You can’t get a handle on your costs if you’re unable to scale correctly; churning staff; underutilizing talent; or hiring talent that’s too specialized. An MSP with a service level agreement (SLA) means set, known costs (or range of costs) that you can budget for with certainty. You’ll find that in the long run it’s more cost efficient than having the staffing issues.  

(5) You want one person to yell at.

If something does go wrong in the middle of the night, you don’t want to waste time figuring out who’s on shift or finding who’s next on the emergency call list, or – heaven forbid – getting out of bed yourself. The MSP is the single, accountable contact that’s one phone number away.

Prolifics can help.

The “New Business Normal” is here. You have a vision – don’t let your technology get in the way. Our managed services solutions and experience will get you there. Sit down with us – let’s talk about your challenges, review and reevaluate your plans and get you started where it makes the most sense. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just our tagline, it’s what drives us. It’s how we deliver solutions and services. It’s our commitment to you – and it’s needed today more than ever. Visit www.prolifics.com or email solutions@prolifics.com.