Three Considerations for Managed Services

Modern businesses use a lot of technology to keep running; and purchasing, maintaining and upgrading the equipment takes both time and money. As your business grows having a fully scalable service to meet your business needs is an effective solution to avoid any of the pitfalls associated with managing your technology.

With all of your services in one place - with one bill to pay - you don’t have to pay more than one provider for the services that you need across the board. From storage solutions to hosted telephony, managed services can help reduce expenditure and give you complete visibility of spend.

What Are Managed Services?

As an alternative to on-demand outsourcing or purchasing and maintenance of your on-prem equipment, managed services is the proactive practice of outsourcing certain business functions or processes. You are billed according to the work or functions provided and have an on-demand ability to scale these services as required.

According to a report by Gartner, 70% of IT support services for infrastructure services can be managed from a remote location. With an ever-changing technology landscape, managed services help businesses remain agile, control costs, align IT with evolving business objectives and respond quickly to competitive opportunities.

1. Cost Reductions

One of the most significant reasons to choose managed services is the financial implications. Managed services save you money. 

Your MSP (Managed Service Provider) will monitor and maintain your technology systems, allowing network problems to be prevented before they turn into costly downtime, data recovery or associated repair costs. Additionally, as most managed service plans include remote monitoring and support, issues can normally be accessed and repaired from the office. This means that there are no lengthy waits for an engineer to come out and downtime is reduced.

What's more MSP's use the latest technologies and equipment to deliver services. IT services are updated regularly with no additional cost to your business. MSPs bring the advantage of quickly implementing new technology into your businesses eliminating the risk of obsolete IT infrastructure.

Combining these ad-hoc cost reductions with a consistent monthly rate means there are no financial surprises, budgeting is easier and you have a clear view of expenditure. As managed services are fully scalable, you only pay for what you need, when you need it. 

Another financial implication of managed services is with training and recruitment. With managed services, all businesses have access to highly skilled IT personnel without the associated costs of recruitment and training. In-house IT personnel from your MSP usually possess deep expertise in their specialist field, meaning you have access to the best support for your IT services. With dedicated support desks, the ability to have access to highly skilled IT support on hand can be invaluable when it comes to dealing with potential problems.

2. Security and Compliance

If you work in finance, banking or healthcare industries where guidelines for data management and security are constantly changing, managed services will ensure you remain compliant. Automatically upgrading your network and services, and ensuring your network infrastructure is set up to the latest guidelines.

In a report from Statista, it transpired that the average cost of cybersecurity attacks on an SME was £8,180 in the last 12 months. With enterprises having more and more sensitive information and data worth stealing, attackers often cover their tracks by taking over one system whilst attacking another. MSP's use of network monitoring and backup protocols to prevent attacks where possible, and reduce downtime should the worst happen. 

Providing cybersecurity services such as dark web testing, SIEM and penetration testing helps both reduce and mitigate cybersecurity threats to your business.

3. Disaster Management and Business Continuity

Disaster can strike in many different forms, but whatever event may take your business down, a MSP is well-placed to help prepare for emergencies. Whether, fire, flood or storm, or a deliberately targeted attack such as ransomware the support provided by an MSP will ensure your business is back up and running with minimal downtime.

It is estimated, on average UK's SMEs experience 45 minutes of downtime each week which equates to approximately £500 per employee in lost productivity each year. With many small and mid-size enterprises not having a data backup infrastructure in place, and those that do, having an only partially recoverable one, the advanced data management and recovery services offered by an MSP provide peace of mind should the worst happen.

Outsourcing to a MSP prepares your business for those costly downtimes, offering cloud-based, local and remote backup solutions an MSP will support your business-critical operations in times of disaster.

Why Wavenet?

Providing unlimited and comprehensive IT support services, specifically designed to meet your unique requirements. Our fully managed IT support services will maintain and manage your IT infrastructure while supporting your staff and teams. Effective IT systems are crucial to your business success. Ongoing IT support turns your IT infrastructure into a valuable asset rather than a necessary evil.

We'll take complete responsibility of your technology providing a comprehensive level of support.

Working with our expert teams we can give advice, help with troubleshooting and resolve complex IT problems through to resolution. We provide fully managed IT support that gives you the freedom to concentrate on building your business.