How do you tell if a Managed Services deployment is the right model for your business??
In this blog, we’ll walk through the questions you need to ask to see if a Managed Service approach is a good fit for your business.
Managed Services are all about adding capability to your business, as well as allowing you to offload base functions to an external team, which has SLAs to ensure the service levels are met.
Knowing if your business is a good fit for a Managed Services offering is an interesting question to pose – and in this blog, we’ll take a look through the sort of considerations you’ll have in arriving at that decision.
We’ve put this together as a Q&A format, as this should help position this in a similar way to how your CIO might ask you the questions. Let’s take a look:
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We already have an ICT Team
If you already have an internal ICT team, this is an ideal situation.
The Managed Services offering is really about augmenting the team you have in place already. We bring a level of rigour, process and management to the Managed Services and this allows your internal team to step back from front line monitoring and escalations.
There’s a range of options too, depending on the size of your business. We focus on Cisco and Meraki network Managed services.
You may well already have a Level 1 helpdesk assisting your users. We can augment that by being a point of escalation, as well as conducting our own independent monitoring and management of your network.
The answer lies with what sort of team you already have and how we can best dovetail into that team – and its always going to be slightly different, depending on the size of your business.
As an alternate, for companies with multiple branch locations, this feature provides a single-pane-of-glass to see the status of the network.
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I only want to Augment my Existing Team
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A Managed Service might be about replacing head count, but this in general should not be seen as the driving force. We are not necessarily designed to replace your in-house staff, but better positioned to add to them.
The beauty of an external Managed Service is that we can deliver this at scale, with well thought through process and procedure, backed up by SLAs.
Accountability is much greater on our team delivering to you when we have a signed agreement to deliver those services than you can drive with an internal team alone.
We are an ITIL driven company with the tools to match to ensure all Change, Incident and Problem Management is managed effectively and efficiently to enable your environments to perform at their best.
Acting in a role of augmenting your existing team means that we can liaise with the team you already have onsite but offload a lot of the routine work from them.
Traceability can be important to some businesses, so the capability we can provide is the management of changes, issues and incidents, so you have full reportability.
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I only Have Two Small Sites - am I too Small?
The answer is no – we have our services available a Bronze, Silver and Gold, designed to suit smaller customers, with simpler needs.
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You may need some hands and feet onsite assistance on occasion, but for the most part you are able to manage in house – our services overlay on to your business and provide a set of deliverables that can grow as your business does.
Finding ICT staff to man your helpdesk can be difficult and so alleviating this business problem can allow your business to focus on delivering on its core value, while we manage the network to support that.
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Wi-Fi is Critical to our Operations
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You’re in luck! Wireless is one of our core specialities, so if you’re a hospital that relies on Wi-Fi for its biomedical, a warehouse that has to have the bar code scanners working properly, all the way through to a port that moves containers and needs Wi-Fi, we can help.
Large scale Wi-Fi can be particularly complex to deliver and support and we have a large number of referrals for customers needing help in remediating poor performing Wi-Fi – we can take that pain away and manage your Wi-Fi network with our Managed Services.
Wi-Fi often needs a site visit, with accompanying RF surveys and debugging – we have a distributed team and all the equipment needed to support your installation.
No longer will you have to worry about wireless dropouts impacting productivity, or rely on a partner that can’t seem to quite get your network working properly, when we can do all this for you.
Periodic site surveys are a valuable tool in ensuring the environment hasn’t changed and we can build these in to your managed services agreement.
ASSOCIATED BLOGS:
- Top 8 Secrets to Great Wi-Fi
- Wi-Fi Design: Business Requirements
- Wi-Fi Design: Technical Requirements
My network is a mix of Meraki and Cisco - is that ok?
A double yes on this one!
We are certified by Cisco to deliver Cisco Powered Managed Services, so if you have a Cisco or Meraki network (or a blend of both), we are in the perfect position to help.
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Managed Services Q&A: Summary.
Hopefully this blog has helped to demystify what Managed Services are and if they are a good fit for your business. They don’t fit within every business model, but for many businesses, the ability to outsource the many routine functions of network management and ensure theses are delivered with process and procedure, to an agreement backed up by SLAs is a compelling offering.
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Managed Services can grow and add functionality over time too, so if you have a base network requiring a Bronze 9*5 service, you can step up to the AI driven proactive insights and 24x7 support of the Gold service in time.
Peace of mind may be a key driver, as well as the desire to augment your in-house team and continue to rely on them, coupled with an external team – you don’t have to give up control and local knowledge, but there are a lot of benefits to the Managed Services overlay.
