03 Feb Benefits of Managed Services
1. Increased Efficiency:
Companies that are looking for a managed services provider for management and remediation have become used to the “firefighting method” of tracking and responding to events. Service providers have access to sophisticated tools – allowing user problems to be reported and rectified immediately. Often times, the efficiency gains are so great through managed services, that businesses are surprised by the extent of inefficiency before switching.
2. Reduced Downtime Risk:
Managed service providers are able to determine if a failure is imminent, and will deploy sophisticated methodologies to prevent a failure from occuring. This helps companies reduce their downtime and risk for the client company. See our article on the cost of system downtime for more information.
3. Capacity Planning Information:
Managed services clients are able to realize an added benefit that they may not even have considered: Because an MSP’s tools constantly monitor the performance and capacity of the client’s file system space, database size, network bandwidth and more, all of that information is captured and held as data. The client then has access to this data and can use it to mind for IT capacity and performance trends.
4. Customized Dashboards:
MSPs provide access to data through a client portal. Clients can see when service tickets where resolves; what the resolution was; and performance information both historically and in near real time. Clients can also custom design dashboards. An executive, for instance, might want a green light on his desktop to indicate that all systems associated with an ERP system are functioning normally; if he sees a yellow light, he knows to contact someone to resolve the situation.
Customizations like these are far more specific than what a standardized layout can achieve, and are a powerful value add for any organization.
5. Patch Management:
Patch management can be left behind in the mountain of to-do lists that most IT departments have to reckon with. Unfortunately, this can leave an organization at risk for downtime, security vulnerabilities and incidents at a vendor may not support when patched are too far behind. Managed services providers can not only manage patches so that they remain updated, they can also provide users with a patch management SLA providing the details of service.