How do managed services fit into your organization? According to IDC research, the top 4 corporate imperatives of organizations today are as follows:

• Drive down operational costs
• Strengthen customer relationships
• Improve financial management
• Lead in product innovation and/or market position

However, according to IDC research, the biggest challenge that businesses face in executing their corporate strategy is focusing the right people and resources on strategic initiatives. Essentially, firms are looking to ensure that their talent is focused on core areas of their business while optimizing productivity.

In addition, firms tell IDC that they lack available investment funds and resources and are challenged with inadequate linkages between their IT environment and how business processes are managed. Companies want a way to move cost savings gained in one part of the business to another part of the business. They also seek a means to more effectively orchestrate how IT interacts with business processes and with critical application environments.

Enter Managed Services

There are many reasons why companies use managed services to support their businesses, but this blog discusses the most significant reasons and how they align with key corporate objectives.

Lower costs

Organizations interviewed by IDC indicated that, when it came to financial management, managed services enabled them to drive down costs while also freeing up funds for investment. According to these firms, the use of managed services was driven by internal cost-savings mandates and the potential high costs of upgrading to new infrastructure technologies.

Improve responsiveness to customers and market changes

Enterprises are utilizing managed services to help keep pace with market dynamics. According to the organizations we interviewed, managed services provide greater agility and faster time to market by streamlining application implementation, increasing operational efficiencies, and ensuring consistent delivery of global services across business units.

Optimize resource utilization, enhance organizational adaptability

Beyond helping organizations standardize and/or consolidate existing IT environments in order to optimize utilization, managed services increasingly serve two additional and significant purposes: They enhance current capabilities by mining existing processes and technologies and/or adding functionality, and they support fundamental redesign or transformation of existing architecture to help organizations leverage new technologies (e.g., virtualization, cloud computing) and reach new markets.

Better allocate talent and skills

Buyers believe that managed services provide them with access to resources, staff, capacity, and industry knowledge and expertise. Managed services thus allow enterprises to focus their people on strategic initiatives that are critical to success, such as product innovation and market leadership.

Moreover, managed services can help companies and their IT staffs mitigate the risks of new and disruptive technologies. Consider the role managed services can play by enabling enterprises to execute their corporate strategy and achieve their top imperatives as they adopt these leading technologies and services:

Expanding investments in mobility, social media, and analytics

While the rapid adoption of mobile devices is elevating the need to ensure worker productivity that increasingly involves supporting individual requirements, the deployment of social media as part of doing business is placing increasing stress on how to enhance customer service, optimize sales opportunities, meet key regulations, and ensure that brand value and image are maintained. Additionally, analytics, also referred to as Big Data, is becoming a strategic means of helping enterprises not only optimize the value of these emerging business models and associated business processes but also mitigate the many risks across organizations.

Transformation to cloud-based delivery

When it comes to cloud, businesses are increasingly investing in building private clouds and using public clouds, such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), to support critical business needs such as lowering costs, accelerating time to market, and increasing agility. However, these capabilities are placing greater pressure on organizations to ensure security requirements while meeting key regulatory needs, including data portability. Given that most businesses indicated a lack of resources to manage a fully mature cloud environment, enterprises need to determine how they will mitigate the risks of moving select applications or services to an outside provider as they transform their IT to a cloud-based model of consumption.

Buyers indicated to IDC that they look for managed service providers with certain critical capabilities, including a full range of IT and business process services, proven record of delivering on service-level agreements (SLAs) and costs, financial stability, industry expertise, and a strong reputation.

Schedule a consultation to learn more about managed services from Flagship Solutions Group.

If you liked this blog, you might also like: Are Managed Services the Best Financial Choice for Your Business?

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