IT Managed Services: 8-Point Checklist for Maximizing ROI

Often companies are under the belief that they are well equipped with the necessary skills, have access to the latest training programs, and have a sound IT roadmap that is aligned to their customer’s business needs. After all, isn’t it just routine “business as usual” to stay on top of current technologies and a means to support it?

History has shown that this isn’t always the case. In-house IT projects and service success stories are becoming harder to find. With technology constantly changing and at an increasingly accelerated rate it’s becoming difficult to ensure that your IT organization will be skilled and ready to react when needed.

Although training your IT staff to handle new technologies solutions and services is important and most definitely needed, it doesn’t always guarantee success. This is where engaging an IT managed services partner with experience in dealing with dynamics of technological change and the implementation of new technologies and innovations makes sense.

The Reality

Let’s face it, “training” combined with “real-world experience” trumps “training” alone in every instance. Would you rather go to a heart surgeon who is fresh out of training perform procedures on your loved ones or opt for a surgeon who has several years of experience performing the procedure? What is the level of risk that your business customers are willing to take in relying on their in-house IT counterparts? How can the business better utilize their internal IT counterparts to reduce risk while allowing them to better innovate and compete in the marketplace?

Maintaining the right balance between your business counterparts and internal IT while leveraging a specialized IT services partner is the most viable formula for success!

IT Managed Services Partner Advantages

There are enormous benefits that can be attained by partnering with specialized IT service providers in the form of sourcing IT projects and managed services. In most cases, the benefits are immediately realized while others may evolve to increase your return on investment (ROI). Either way, leveraging a specialized IT services partner will help to achieve better outcomes for your business.

Here are some immediate benefits that can be gained:

1. Cost Control

   • • Managed services partners typically operate under a pre-determined fixed priced contract permitting accurate budget forecasting while limiting exposure to cost overruns.
     • Pay for the product and service outcomes and not the fixed assets. Convert your IT organizations Capex to an OpEx model for better cost control. Limit the need for unnecessary recruitment, technology, and facilities investments. Leave it to your managed services provider.

2. Reduce Labor Costs

   • • Hiring full-time employees for the sole purpose of working on a specific project costs more time, money, and effort than employing a managed service provider.
     • Avoid training and certification costs through a managed service provider who will deploy resources skilled and pre-certified to meet project and services requirements.

3. Avoid Skill Gap Risks

   • • Managed service providers will recruit and deploy pre-qualified, certified, experienced & trained resources out of the gate as per the contract specification limiting learning curves and avoiding skill gaps that could put projects at risk.

4. Scalability

   • • A managed services provider can quickly scale up or down on support staff resources to meet volume demands keeping them more productive and limiting any paid down-time.
     • Workloads are often dynamic and require on-demand changes to ensure maximum efficiencies in technology, services, and staffing are attained. A managed services provider will work closely with customers to forecast workloads and then ensure adequate resources are available when needed to manage them.

5. Quick to Implement a New Technology or Service

   • • A quality outsourced IT service organization will have the necessary expertise, technologies, facilities, and skilled resources to engage in project work immediately. Whereas attempting to build capabilities, train, manage and staff in-house teams on designing, implementing, and managing new technologies and services exposes companies to cost overruns, skill gaps, damaging errors, and project delays. In-house investments and level of risks to take-on can be significantly higher than when contracting an expert service provider.

6. Enabling Company Resources to Stay Focused on Running Your Business

   • • There’s no need to pull resources away from their day-to-day activities to perform IT related proofs of concepts, delve into researching technology solutions, train in new technologies or tools, and to put in excessive hours trying to implement a new product or services while running their business at the same time. This is costly and puts business performance at risk. Leave this effort to the experts. A managed services partner can perform all the necessary work in parallel to your internal staff supporting business as usual limiting the unwarranted risks of business degradation.

7. Reduce Product & Services Risk

   • • Managed services providers that specialize in the product development or services being asked of them are the experts and will reduce risks related to mismatched requirements, project delays, security or compliance breaches, cost overruns, business holdups, and a poor customer experience.
     • Managed services providers sign up to take on a lot of the risks for you and provide a guarantee that the services delivered meet all requirements laid out in a Statement of Work (SOW) contract backed by a Service Level Agreement (SLA).

8. Compliance and Security

   • • Depending on your type of business and the industry serviced companies may be required to undergo security and regulatory compliance audits when implementing a new business process, technology, or services to prevent damaging risk exposure.
     • Managed services partners can help ensure you’re in compliance through the services being sourced from them. Your security and compliance requirements are built into the service providers contract and delivered as requested upon project startup. Pre-qualified managed services providers will save to time and money.

Key factors for IT leaders to consider for achieving greater success in serving their business counterparts

1. Focus internal IT to align closer to your business counterparts and their ever-changing needs.
2. Jointly manage and prioritize business needs and where they require IT support.
3. Translate and categorize business requirements in terms of technologies solutions and services; then, incorporate them into your IT roadmap.
4. Determine in-house IT expertise, knowledge gaps and best use of resources to meet the dynamic business demands and how to deliver on their demands in a timely fashion.
5. Engage IT services partners to fulfil technology and services gaps in terms of experience, time-to-market, and costs.
6. Establish a disciplined forum for continuous service improvement through process and technology optimization and innovation. Include your business counterparts as well as IT service partners.
7. Measure success in terms of “Customer Experience Outcomes” and drive them down to your IT services partners in the form of Service Levels (SLAs, SLOs, KPIs).

Not sure where or how to get started on the right path to better Customer Experience Outcomes? Contact an Artech IT Partner today for guidance.