Managed Services Offer IT Procurement

The information technology solutions that are available for businesses to utilize are continually improving. While these enhancements are beneficial to your operational abilities, you do need to make sure you are staying up to date; a managed service provider can help with IT Procurement. 

Why is IT Procurement Critical?

Basically, the most effective way to get value out of your technology is to ensure that each piece serves a purpose, as well as gets along well with the rest of your infrastructure and solution set. To do so, it may help to examine what solutions any modern business would likely require.

Workstations and Other Resources

In order to properly accomplish their tasks, any employee is going to need the proper tools. In your case, that means that they will need workstations and/or the other technology that is most appropriate for their responsibilities - not just whatever you could get the best bargain on.

Say that you did settle for what offered you the lowest price, without considering the value that you’d receive. Chances are good that whatever system you purchased wouldn’t be able to effectively serve the needs of everyone in your business… and that’s assuming that you didn’t just get a good “deal” because there is something wrong with these systems.

In this example, you’d have to pay more anyway to have someone fix your workstations, if not purchase more that do suit your needs. However, a managed service provider would be aware of your business’ needs, leveraging their connections with vendors to get you the most value they could for your money.

Servers and Networking

Once your workers have the tools that they need, you will need to have an IT infrastructure in place that permits them to collaborate appropriately. Moreover, this infrastructure should have the ability to expand to match any growth that your business experiences.

While this all sounds fairly straightforward, it is actually a fairly difficult process; it should only be tackled by someone who comprehends how these solutions communicate with one another. Otherwise, there are likely going to be problems and potentially, downtime. If a managed service provider were to assist you, however, your chances of downtime would be greatly reduced. By offering both their professional advice and assistance in actually implementing your solutions, a provider enables your business to adopt these solutions much more efficiently.

Software as a Service

Once you have the technology you need and the infrastructure to support it, you’re going to need the software solutions that your industry demands to properly utilize it all. Now, not to make assumptions about you, but it isn’t uncommon for business decision makers to leverage torrents and pirated copies of the solutions they need in order to cut costs. 

These decision makers are making a bad decision by doing so, as it leaves your business vulnerable to legal problems, unwanted attention from law enforcement, and diminished respect from the public.

A managed service provider can give you a much better option than illegal downloads via a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering. Instead of dropping a huge lump sum on your software (and repeating this payment each time you upgrade to a newer, better solution), you can effectively subscribe to the software solution you need (along with professional support for it) for a consistent and predictable monthly rate. Not only is this easier to budget for, you’ll know that your team is working with the best programs available.

Do Managed Services Sound Right for You?

Find out more about what a managed service provider can offer you by talking to the professionals at Macro Systems! Give us a call at 703-359-9211 to learn more, and perhaps get started!