Coleman Technologies Blog

Understanding Why Managed Services Work

It may help to look at managed services a lot like how you’d look at any other outsourced services provider external to your business, fulfills some business needs you to have. However, this service goes a little more in-depth than many you may be more familiar with. An MSP (or managed services provider) will supplement your existing technology management, reducing the responsibilities you have to maintain them (oh, and the costs of doing so as well).

While this might not sound like much at first, it can greatly cut down on the time and resources that any one of your given tasks can require. Let’s assume that your IT technicians spend about 45 minutes each day on maintaining your servers, and again, that’s maintenance. An issue could make this process take much longer.

So, each week your techs are spending three hours and forty-five minutes on mere maintenance. What else could be accomplished during the time dedicated to this maintenance? Now, think about how that time increases every time an issue is discovered, and all the time that is spent resolving these issues after the fact.

It all adds up pretty quickly.
However, adopting managed services can help relieve your in-house staff of these responsibilities. This could allow them to devote more time to improving your business’ technology, or supporting your other internal staff, or any other goal that would benefit your operations more than playing Whack-a-Mole with IT issues ever would. Can you confidently say they have the time to accomplish all this now?

What If You Don’t Have Internal IT Resources on Staff?

If you don’t have internal IT resources, outsourcing your IT needs to a managed services provider has even greater benefits. Take, for example, the reduced financial obligation. While there are many benefits to maintaining a small business, the typically limited size of the budget isn’t one of them. These limitations may mean that you have fewer qualified in-house IT technicians, meaning that some of the IT maintenance and support falls to your other employees -- likely IT novices. This is just too risky to enact, as improperly configured or maintained solutions could (and likely will) contribute to major issues with downtime.

Managed services help to make your solutions more predictable, without the need to manage and maintain them internally. To find out more things that Coleman Technologies can do as an MSP, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

We’re not trying to talk smack about organizations that are forced into this position. Small businesses have it tough, especially with the more technical aspects of infrastructure management and the finer details of computing. It takes more than a passable amount of knowledge to manage an infrastructure filled with the IT needed for your employees to complete their duties on a daily basis.

Vendors are there to sell you the products and services that your company needs to thrive, including the processes of building, delivering, and supporting these products and services. If you want to be successful in the business world, it’s your prerogative to create a solid relationship with your vendors. Unfortunately, vendor representatives can eat up a considerable amount of the time you should be spending managing your business.

One particular study suggests that IT vendors can take up over 13 percent of a CIO’s time; that’s time that your business simply can’t get back. We recommend taking action now to change the way your organization handles vendor management. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

• Consolidate vendors: Often times businesses will test products by working with multiple vendors. If they are comparable, you should consider moving to one vendor rather than several, making the process of handling all of your products much easier as a whole.
• Measure vendor performance: It can take time to measure vendor performance, but the time you spend will easily be made up when you eliminate vendors that aren’t providing adequate services.
• Implement a vendor management service: When you have a single point of contact for all of your vendors, you’ll find that it’s easier and more effective to work with them. Outsourcing this to Coleman Technologies can help you save time and resources. We can handle your contracts, performance analyses, relationship management, and vendor risk to keep your technology working as intended.

Don’t let vendors hold you back from being successful--that’s not what they’re there for. To find out how you can better manage your vendors and resources, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

The first considerations you need to make are fairly straightforward.

Cost

You really do get what you pay for. Rather than settling for a cheaper system with plans of replacing it later, make sure you select a system that can be upgraded and expanded (yes, there is a difference). That way, you can avoid doubling your costs by eliminating the need to procure more than one system. It also helps to seek out a vendor that can supply all the needs your business has - like additional hardware for your POS, or enhanced software to power it - to simplify your processes.

Integration and Implementation

As mentioned before, your POS system should have the ability to grow as your needs of it do. For instance, while you may want to implement customer pagers at some point, it is probably wiser to focus on the essentials - like receipt printers and cash drawers. However, you will also want to make sure that your POS system has the capability to be upgraded to incorporate more advanced features as your business grows.

Tracking

Although this isn’t too far off from integration, you may want your POS to integrate with your inventory system, your quoting system, your CRM software, or any other business app on your network. Depending on your needs, you might even want your security cameras to pull a feed from your POS system to record purchases.

Support

Let’s face facts… you don’t want to find your POS system experiencing technical difficulties without anyone available to help you resolve them. Whether its complications with the software itself or a hardware issue, you need to be sure that support is always available to you.

When running a business, it is crucial that you have the technology to properly take payments. Coleman Technologies can help ensure that you are prepared to do business with reliable solutions. Give us a call at (604) 513-9428 to get started.

Cloud Productivity

One option a business can take is by adding in a cloud productivity suite. Options like Google’s G Suite and Microsoft’s Office 365 can bring a business a lot of value, without the typically massive capital outlay the yearly software license would command. Besides, you probably already need licenses for a word processor and spreadsheet app anyway. Inside the software there are integrated collaboration options that allow your team to work on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations together in real time.

Communication

Efficient collaboration is not possible without strong communications. Today, there are options out there where an organization doesn’t necessarily need to invest huge sums in replacing their normal communications strategy to get the benefits that innovations made in the solutions can bring. By utilizing instant messaging, web-based conferencing, and cloud-based email companies can improve their top-to-bottom communication without taking on a lot of extra cost.

Collaboration Apps

New innovations in communication software are now available that provide advanced collaboration options. Developed like a forum, but with direct communication options, and integrations with third-party applications, collaboration apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams have a lot of options to help drive team productivity forward.

If you are looking for ways to improve your organizational productivity, call the IT experts at Coleman Technologies today at (604) 513-9428. 

For many smaller businesses the IT administrator’s position is not one held by a certified IT professional. It is held by whomever is most knowledgeable about computers; or, even worse, the person who most uses a particular machine. This can lead to complete catastrophe.

A help desk, either as a standalone service, or as a part of a larger managed services platform, can provide the kind of comprehensive IT support every organization is looking for. It doesn’t just battle broken technology, either. It also reduces downtime that comes from human error, whether it be from IT related issues or situational incompetence. If your staff can’t do their jobs efficiently because they encounter technology-induced roadblocks, having IT experts available around-the-clock to look into and fix most of the problems your staff could have is a huge benefit. 

Additionally, if you do have a dedicated IT administrator or outsource your IT management to a firm that doesn’t offer help desk, having remote technicians at the ready can help an IT department that is stretched thin. Augmenting your IT staff by instituting a help desk can keep their attention on the projects that will help the organization move forward more successfully. 

If your business finds itself falling short in terms of help desk support, look no further. Coleman Technologies can help your business get the support it needs to maintain operational efficiency. To learn more, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.