According to a recent Forrester Research study, the majority of business executives will be driven by digital transformation by 2020. While new technologies and security practices are rapidly changing the way businesses operate and scale, not every company has the resources to upgrade obsolete or legacy IT internally.
So how can businesses continue to stay ahead of the curve and optimize accordingly?
By outsourcing managed IT services, you can focus your priorities on innovative and strategic initiatives. Third-party managed service providers will help guide your organization in the areas where you don’t have expertise.
To understand the substantial benefits of outsourcing managed IT services, we’ve outlined a few recommendations on how to get started.
Develop a Strategic Plan
Before you allocate budget to new technology and managed IT resources, make sure you have a strategy in place to keep track of the business goals and KPIs. Evaluate the current state of your business and determine the needs of each department. What applications are teams using? Where can you get rid of any bottlenecks in the process? How can you allocate internal IT resources to other parts of the business? These important questions help identify your business pain points and discover any gaps where outsourcing makes sense.
A poorly executed digital transformation can result in outages, data losses, wasted money and even a lack of jobs. Having this plan and framework in place will help other third-party sources recognize issues in the interim so that they can better understand your business priorities.
Cultivate Third-Party Partner Relationships
Selecting the right third-party partner can be tough, especially since businesses prefer to work with vendors that they trust and leverage on a long-term basis. It’s important to formulate a working relationship with a vendor who aligns with your business goals and can initiate change in areas you need help. The best partners will not only take up daily IT tasks, but they will also add value and help you determine the underlying issues and introduce new solutions.
Furthermore, this partner can evaluate existing and new technology and software programs and provide suggestions of IT solutions to integrate into your business potentially. A trusted IT partner is one that will help you focus on revenue-generating projects and strategic priorities to guide you through success in the future state.
Encourage a Culture of Innovation
According to the SMB Group study, 27% of executives found that resistance to change was the top challenge for their business. When innovating new digital applications and processes for your business, it’s essential to get buy-in from all employees. Freeing up internal resources allows for a culture of innovation, where team members from multiple levels of your organization can participate in parts of the transformation. More people will embrace business changes with positivity if employees feel involved, build their knowledge of the long-term journey and understand unforeseen changes when they arise.
Employing a managed service provider can also help provide training to several teams on new applications, software and security practices. Keeping employees educated and informed throughout all steps of the transformation will instill transparency and confidence so your business can seamlessly transform and scale.
The Align Approach
For over 30 years, Align's award-winning IT services have helped many of the world’s largest financial firms, retailers, and fortune 500 providers reduce the cost of IT operations, minimize risks and ultimately provide better service to clients.
Our proven Managed IT Services platform is built with current and developing technology in mind and is supported by our experienced team of IT engineers and infrastructure experts.
For more information about Align's Managed Services, visit here.
Take the first step toward experiencing the measurable benefits of emerging technology by reaching out to an Align IT specialist today.
