Many small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs), find that they need to have the right technology before they can grow. In fact, studies have shown that businesses that cap out at 250 employees and primarily have plans to grow in 2018 are focusing their strategies on using IT solutions and applications to achieve growth.
Hopefully for these businesses, they will select the technology that is right to help their business grow at a satisfactory rate according to their unique needs. An MSP, or managed service provider, could provide them with an expert team for much less than an internal IT department would cost to hire, and that could deploy the right technology for these businesses to reach their goals.
With the new year fast approaching, working with an MSP could help your business grow and gain revenue through leveraging the business technology the MSP would provide. Here’s how:
Managed IT
The average SMB is heavily reliant on their technology as they complete the day-to-day tasks the business requires. Whether they’re trying to reach out to customers or access a key record for one of their job responsibilities, each employee needs reliable technology in order to be productive and thereby generate revenue for the company. If the device an employee relies on to work suddenly malfunctions and loses data, the ramifications will be felt throughout the company and ultimately influence its ability to remain productive. Working with the proactive methods of managed IT will better enable your technology to remain efficient. Some of these proactive methods are as follows:
- Remote Monitoring: Which would you prefer: having a downtime incident impact your revenue streams and cost your business huge sums, or have your network watched so that incoming issues can be anticipated and mitigated with minimal impact? Managed IT takes the latter approach, keeping an eye out for signs of impending problems and fixing them proactively so that your company experiences minimal ramifications.
- Proactive Maintenance: Maintenance is a key consideration to any business that relies on technology, especially since known issues are resolved through patches that software manufacturers release as they are developed. This maintenance must also be proactive, as without it, there may not be a business to maintain for very long. Potential customers and clients don’t look kindly upon businesses that suffer a security breach, so these events have to be avoided and resisted. Think about it this way: IT maintenance is like locking your car at night--it helps things from being stolen from you when you aren’t looking.
- Help Desk Support: Maintaining a business takes a lot more than the 9-to-5 hours each work day. As a matter of fact, half of adults in the United States work an additional hour over the weekend. As a result, IT support will be needed outside of “typical” business hours. Infradapt offers a 24/7 helpdesk that is there to provide support at, quite literally, any time.
The Continued Domination of Cloud Services
The cloud is well on its way to being the solution for SMBs. A survey in Q2 of 2017 found that at least one cloud solution was used in 92% of SMBs, and projections place that number as rising. Businesses find the cloud’s flexibility to be an advantage, along with its scalability and security. The cloud can even uphold the compliance requirements and regulatory standards that many companies are beholden to.
Using Managed IT for UCC
UCC, or Unified Communication and Collaboration, is a strong requirement for any business that leans on a customer-centric model. Not only is this useful for maintaining communication with a soon-to-be customer throughout the buyer’s journey, it is also of use within the business itself. Vendors are also important to maintain communication with, with phones being made obsolete with more collaboration taking place online.
UCC is the perfect solution for the small businesses looking to improve their communications for 2018. While many early unified collaboration solutions were problematic and glitchy, despite their high costs, the solutions of today offer high performance for an appropriate cost through applications and software. In addition to collaborative software allowing shared work on documents and other projects, UCC solutions also bundle in messaging apps for internal resources to communicate, virtual meeting rooms, VoIP telephony, as well as other features. UCC can even integrate with line-of-business applications, including customer management systems.
If you want to embrace the swiftly-changing technology solutions of today and tomorrow, partner up with Infradapt. As your MSP, we’ll make sure that your technology serves you and your business' needs. For more information on what managed IT can achieve, call us at 800.394.2301.