How Managed Services Can Help Your Business
Rather than only asking service providers to help with projects on an ad-hoc basis, companies can turn to managed services providers (MSPs) to handle whole functions. As a result, companies that use managed services gain the assurance that a trusted provider can perform the services they need without having to stay on top of the matter as much internally.
For example, a company could turn to an MSP to handle all their IT needs, which reduces the burden on the company to stay up-to-date on all the latest technology changes and frees up internal staff to focus on other tasks.
Focus on Core Competencies
It can be difficult for a business — particularly small and medium-sized ones — to have expertise outside of their core functions. A restaurant, for instance, could have great culinary and customer experience skills amongst its staff, but handling payroll might not be anyone’s strength.
Thus, outsourcing this whole function to an MSP would be beneficial, because managers can then focus more on running the restaurant rather than the HR/administrative aspects of the job. And as the subject matter changes, such as with minimum wage increases or new overtime laws, the business does not have to worry as much about getting up-to-speed on the issue, at least administratively, because the managed service provider has the expertise to make the necessary adjustments so that there are no gaps in service.
A Better Use of Costs
If a company uses managed services for business to gain the benefit of subject matter expertise, they might also save on cost. Certain functions might require a dedicated employee or even a whole department that is too costly for certain businesses. Yet an MSP has economies of scale, so a business can potentially use their services for less than what it would cost to hire more employees.
And MSPs do not need to replace existing employees, but rather companies that use a managed service can get more return on the cost for their current staff. For example, rather than having an IT employee spend time getting acclimated to Infrastructure as a Service providers and migrating the company’s data to the cloud, the organization might get more value out of letting an MSP handle that work, while the IT employees spend more one-on-one time helping the rest of the staff get used to the switch from on-premise to cloud storage.
Convenience Matters
Even if cost and expertise are not much of a factor when evaluating managed services, some companies might choose to use them simply for the convenience. Just like you might order in food after a long day at the office, sometimes it’s easier to offload some work to another party. An MSP can efficiently handle tasks that you might not want to bother with otherwise, but which are still important to tackle. For example, no one within a company might be interested in certain aspects of compliance work, even if they have the ability to do it, so it could be easier and better for employee morale to have an MSP handle it.
Or a company may be interested in tackling an issue, such as improving sustainability or reducing energy costs, but it’s still more convenient to have another party take on the analytics work to determine areas of improvement with energy managed services, rather than making employees put in extra time.
Request a complimentary energy efficiency assessment to find out how Artis Energy’s RTIS® energy analytics platform can provide you with the visibility and insight to transform energy from a fixed cost into a distinct competitive advantage.