Get in touch with us today to find out how can we help you.
Owning a small or medium-sized business (SMB) is a challenge. You need to manage costs while simultaneously delivering great customer service, acquiring new customers, retaining old ones, keeping current with your industry, and meeting government regulations. The thing is technology can give your business the edge it needs to stay ahead, and to make leveraging your technology easier, IT companies in San Antonio recommend using managed services.
What Are Managed Services Anyway?
Managed services are specialized IT services delivered according to a specific service level agreement (SLA). The agreement comes with low, predictable costs for a fixed period of time. It is a high value, low-cost approach to managing your company’s technology.
Proactive vs. Reactive
When assessing IT companies in San Antonio for your IT needs, it is practical to consider one with a proactive approach. With managed services, your business is taking a proactive approach to managing your technology resources. This is in contrast with the typical break-fix, reactive approach of most SMBs. Break-fix means only fixing things after they break, a very high cost, low-value approach to technology.
Managed services take a proactive, efficient approach to managing your technology. They:
- Identify problems before they affect your company’s productivity. Managed services use monitoring software to detect problems before they turn into a productivity-affecting crisis. If a problem is detected, the team can begin working on a resolution before the problem reaches emergency level.
- Apply the appropriate resources to each problem. There is no need for the most experienced and highly-certified person to address a minor problem. That person should be available to handle bigger problems as they occur.
- Handle multiple problems simultaneously. With a small in-house staff, problems are solved sequentially, usually from the most severe to the least. With a large support staff available, managed services can solve problems simultaneously, getting things done faster and more efficiently.
The break-fix approach to managing technology costs a lot of money and never gets beyond the react mode. It:
- Uses a non-IT employee to fix IT problems. Very small businesses usually don’t have a dedicated IT person. This role can fall on the person who knows the most about PCs. And trying to have a non-IT person responsible for IT repairs can end up costing the company a lot of money and downtime.
- Hires as needed. Some SMBs contract with an outside technician to manage IT resources. This person is brought in on an hourly basis as needed. The problem is that this specialist is not dedicated to one company. He or she may have 10 to 20 other clients and be busy with one of them, just when your company is in crisis.
- Hires an IT person to handle things in-house. Having an experienced, educated IT person in-house sounds like a great way to solve your IT problems. The fact is that person is still only going to be reacting to problems. Plus, IT is a wide field. No one person has all the expertise to handle all the issues you might have.
It is Smart to Take the Proactive Approach
If your operations are in reactive mode, then it is probably costing you a lot of money. IT companies in San Antonio recommends moving to proactive mode and hiring managed services for your technology needs. For top-tier managed services that are proactive and effective, call our experts at ICS today.
Further reading
ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.