How Managed IT Services Will Save You Money

When you first start looking for ways to save money, it’s easy to make a handful of changes that create a big impact. After a while, finding ways to save money gets a little harder. You can only save so much money by cutting back on your expenses and avoiding large purchases. Thankfully, cutting back isn’t the only way to save money.

Once you cut all unnecessary expenses, it’s time to save money by improving your business and service operations. Instead of scaling back and not spending, you’ll want to start making investments in the long-term success of your business. Getting managed IT services is one of those investments.

Before diving into the benefits, let’s look at what managed IT services are, along with some examples of commonly contracted tasks for IT service management (ITSM).

Managed IT services are information technology tasks provided by a third party. Typically, under a managed service agreement, the customer pays a certain amount per month for the contracted IT services. Under this agreement, the third party assumes all responsibility for the service requests and asset management, which is what makes managed IT services desirable for problem management and continuously improving ITSM processes.

Managed IT services can be remotely executed or onsite, it really depends on the arrangement and service level agreement (SLA) terms. However, many of today’s service delivery is managed remotely and technicians are sent out in person only when needed for incident management or disaster recovery.

Some typical managed IT services include:

• Servicing rented commercial copy machines
• Managing a server and/or networking equipment
• Managed public/private/hybrid cloud services (like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure)
• SaaS services like Salesforce and Infusionsoft
• Managed VOIP services
• Remote systems monitoring and management
• And more ITSM frameworks and service offerings

Essentially, any IT task you might need can be a managed service. Every business will have different needs based on their network, rented equipment, onsite hardware, cloud-based software, cloud computing needs and other IT infrastructure and configuration management.

When you get managed IT services, you’ll get preventive maintenance. Preventive maintenance is an easy way to save money by avoiding breakdowns that can negatively impact your business. You can’t prevent every issue, but you can certainly prevent a handful of predictable potentials.

There are two types of preventive maintenance. The first is obvious – staying on top of maintenance tasks to prevent equipment from breaking down or malfunctioning. For example, defragmenting your hard drives periodically, scanning your website and network for malware, and checking cable connections are all simple examples of preventive maintenance.

Another form of preventive maintenance you can get from managed IT services is lifecycle tracking and management. Every piece of equipment has a finite lifecycle, and most of the time those lifecycles are predictable.

For instance, routers have a lifespan of about five years and enterprise switches last between 10-12 years. Of course, the actual lifecycle of equipment will vary based on brand. For instance, Cisco and Aruba wireless devices last much longer than other brands.

When you lease equipment through a managed IT service provider, they’ll track the lifecycle of your equipment. When it starts getting toward the end of life (EOL), they’ll replace the equipment.

Without a managed IT service, you’ll have to track and manage your own lifecycles, which is possible, but cumbersome without the right AIOps Solution to predict outages proactively.

When your website or network goes down, every minute accumulates more lost revenue. If your network goes down, you need to get it up and running fast.

Without managed IT services, if your network or website goes down, you’ll have to find someone last minute to restore your business operations. If you find someone who can act immediately, you’ll pay a premium for their services. If your breakdown happens on a weekend, you might need to wait until Monday.

Most managed IT services will guarantee you access to services 24/7, even on the weekends. How long it will take depends on your individual service agreement, but you will be a priority.

DIY repairs gone wrong are the absolute worst way to throw money down the drain. Wanting to save money on repairs is understandable, but repairing your own business infrastructure is a bad idea. If you’re not a trained technician, there are many things that can go wrong.

Although self-repair is legal and cannot legally void a warranty even if your contract states otherwise, you might do more damage trying to fix the problem. If you do more damage, you’ll end up paying even more when you call a technician.

Managed IT service providers usually offer options for hardware, but you don’t have to settle for the lower-tier equipment. If you’re committed to using only the best equipment, without having to buy it yourself, you may find what you need through a managed IT provider.

For example, if you want to set up a local network in your office without buying top-of-the-line network switches, a managed IT company may provide the switches you want under a managed service plan. Even if you’ll eventually buy your own switches, a managed service plan will give you the chance to try them out before you make the financial commitment.

Likewise, say you’re running a local mail center and you want to offer the best copy machine to your customers. However, you don’t want to worry about repairs. You can rent the copy machine you prefer and get a managed IT plan to cover repairs and maintenance.

If you’re ready to start saving money by improving your business operations, it’s time to consider managed IT. Although standard managed services are helpful, AI brings managed IT to a whole new level.

The partnership between Aisera and Cloud MSG, in early 2021, to offer a next-generation managed service, deployable in any IT organization is proof of how AI and Automation can truly supercharge employee experience and help with avoiding costs to organizations looking to improve services and processes in-house.

“Customers deserve the best time-to-value and need substantial benefits from their IT Service Desk Automation solution immediately. We are proud to partner with Cloud MSG to provide significant auto-resolution rates and cost savings over the pricing models of traditional MSPs,” said Muddu Sudhakar, CEO, Aisera.

“Our company has redefined the Managed Services Provider (MSP) space by making service desks more user-centric while maintaining data security, compliance, and system availability,” said Carl Timperio, Chief Technology Officer at Cloud MSG. “When the need arose for a robust pure-play AI backbone, the natural choice was Aisera. With the growing pressure that so many IT teams are facing, we see truly capable AI integrated into their service desk as the only long-term solution. That’s why we’re so excited to partner on this endeavor.”

The partnership has benefitted large-scale companies by automating up to 90 percent of service desk requests–with a cost savings of 90 percent over the pricing models of traditional MSPs. Service desk agents have experienced dramatic productivity gains because incoming tickets are not lagging on an ever-growing backlog; instead, they auto-resolve instantly. Cloud MSG and Aisera enable enterprise clients to immediately deliver an exceptional AI experience to users across the organization.

With our AI-powered automated IT service desk, you can deliver seamless self-service solutions that boost productivity and your bottom line. If you’re ready to elevate your business to the next level using AI-powered tools, request a Generative AI demo to learn more about how our services will benefit your business today!