A company has found a unique way to improve customer service and outflank its competitors. The company’s leadership told its IT staff to set aside its routine activities for two weeks and instead compete in an internal hackathon. The goal: identify a business problem and find a solution. At first, the company’s leaders weren’t sure of what they had started, but at the end of the two weeks, they were blown away by the ideas that surfaced. In particular, one team implemented a tracking app that showed customers the real-time location of delivery trucks, so customers could estimate when a new shipment would arrive and plan their day accordingly. The app significantly boosted customer satisfaction and reduced calls to the company’s help desk by 75 percent. Just as important, the exercise showed how big the payoff can be when skilled IT workers devote more time to helping their company succeed rather than fighting infrastructure fires or performing routine activities like software patching.
Managed IT services can deliver a wide variety of capabilities, ranging from computing, storage and networking resources to mobility management, cybersecurity, email and unified communications, including telephony services. The common thread is that, along with the capabilities themselves, the best service providers also offer ongoing management and maintenance of the underlying infrastructure, service guarantees and end-user support. According to the MSPAlliance, North American companies spend $154 billion on managed services, with SMBs being among the top customers. This dispels the notion that managed services are too expensive or too complicated for SMBs to consider.
After a decade in this market, I’ve seen firsthand that the opposite is true for startups and established small businesses alike. These companies typically see four key benefits: improved operational performance, reduced operational risk, cost avoidance and accelerated innovation. To find the best match for managed IT services, SMB leaders should consider five important criteria: choose a technology partner who focuses primarily on the business; look for a partner that values long-term relationships; assess the provider’s breadth of offerings; address existing technology pain points; and insist on close communications. By utilizing managed IT services, SMBs can extend their IT operations and free their people to do what they do best — make the business more successful.