Want to know how you can find success in the highly competitive modern market? Looking to drive higher profit for less work? It starts by leveraging best-in-class resources across every phase of your business.
That’s where managed services can help.
With the right partner for your company, managed services can lower costs, increase efficiency, and enable the business to focus on core competencies. It reduces unnecessary expenses, eliminates the hidden administrative and human resource costs that add expense to every order, and enables the company to easily deploy best-in-class resources. By leveraging technology, managed services can unlock the data your business is constantly generating, enabling executives to data-driven decisions.
In fact, managed services reduce overall expenses while delivering significantly better results. They are the secret weapon for many of the top enterprise companies.
What Are Managed Services?
Many business managers and executives think they know what managed services are. Those same executives will give you wildly different answers depending on the industry and who you talk to.
The truth is it is a vague term that can cover a multitude of industries and business needs. There may even be differences between how the customer and provider define the same managed services. At the core, there is a business (the customer) that will outsource a service (or series of services) to a provider that is qualified to deliver greater benefits to the customer through the service delivery.
Many times, companies will first connect managed services with IT and technology. A technology managed service provider will take over management of technology for a company, ensuring the systems and technology meet the current run state to provide normal operating performance. This isn’t the only area a managed service provider can benefit a business.
For example, procurement and the supply chain are areas that can also benefit from managed services. Providers like GO2 leverage supplier relationships, market intelligence, buying power and industry experience to reduce expenses and overall inventory, while providing critical supplies to the enterprise. More and more companies are also looking at managed services with the delivery of marketing, helping the company bring on additional resources and expertise to better implement larger scope projects. GO2’s 20/20 Marketing program is a leader in the industry.
No matter the services or industry, there are benefits that can be found with implementing managed services for your business.
The Advantages of Managed Services
By outsourcing non-core business functions to the provider, the customer can focus on core competencies – letting their employees do what they do best. The provider can leverage their experience, processes, and resources for the customer, doing what they do best.
Here’s what that can mean for the business.
Lower Costs
One of the primary benefits of managed services is lower costs.
For example, in procurement for mission critical supplies, the managed services provider, in this case GO2, can leverage the buying power of the business and their global network of suppliers to find the best product at the lowest possible cost. With better visibility into the buying process, and a single supplier to work from, the business can better manage expenses. The provider can also leverage the existing supply chains to ship faster and more accurately, eliminating the costs associated with rush shipments.
The result is typically reduced costs for the enterprise. In our experience, the cost reductions can sometimes be as much as 15% to 25% or more in the first year.
Increased Efficiency
Often, enterprise businesses will leverage managed services to update and improve dated and problematic service areas. These areas are managed without the necessary resources. They may be using dated systems without the latest technology to support or automate processes.
The result is inefficiency. The team may be doing work they aren’t comfortable doing, using a process they inherited or were poorly trained on. Because the company isn’t focused on this service, they have no idea how much waste and overhead there is. It’s not working, but they have no idea how big the problem is. The company has no visibility into the problems.
With managed services, you are turning these processes over to experts in the field. You have a dedicated team experienced in the service area. The team comes in and performs an assessment – incorporating the enterprise needs and goals – before the works starts. By digging deep into the requirements and incorporating best practices, the provider can identify potential opportunities for efficiency improvements. With the assessment complete, the team will build a process that can drive efficiency across the company.
The result is improvement at every phase of the business.
Focus on Core Competencies
Another problem common for enterprise businesses is multi-tasking. Managing work in the service area pulls valuable time and internal resources away from higher priorities.
In many of these cases, managers will not only lead a team but perform additional duties like procurement, or the developer team will also work as an IT resource. This multi-tasking will suck up valuable time that could be spent on more profitable work. Because the manager or employee is doing work they were never trained to do, it will take more time than using a dedicated resource, increasing the waste and hidden costs that hurt productivity.
By moving these vital tasks over to a managed services provider, you can keep employees focused on their core competencies. The provider can do the same work in less time and for a lower cost because this is what they were trained for. You are working with industry-leading experts who can leverage best practices, rather than pulling a valuable employee from more profitable work.
Let your employees focus on their core competencies. Apply employees to projects that drive revenue, rather than extra, but still critical, work.
Industry-Leading Expertise
Building an internal team for service coverage can be expensive, especially if you are filling that team with industry-leaders or resources with specialized expertise. This can lead the enterprise to either pay more for a necessary service or struggle with less than optimal coverage for the service. The company pays more for less benefit. Hidden costs are extremely high.
With the right managed services partner, you are working with industry leaders who can provide expertise and experience you may never find with internal resources alone. In addition, with a managed services provider on your team, you have access to that specialized expertise – expertise can be leveraged in other areas. For example, the service provider can give you access to new technology systems or market insight.
The expertise and experience of the managed services provider can empower additional areas of the business, drastically increasing the return and becoming a competitive advantage for the enterprise.
Data Driven Decision-Making
Data is critical for successful businesses. Many businesses understand the need, but struggle to capture or use data. The need for data is secondary to more immediate business needs.
For the managed services provider, data is critical. The provider must measure the delivery of service to the customer, whether it’s IT and technology service, critical supplies, or marketing deliverables. Data may never be available if internal resources are used. This insight isn’t a priority like it is for the service provider.
As the provider compiles and shares the data, managers and business leaders can use the data to improve decision making. With GO2, an intelligence dashboard gives business leaders critical data immediately, helping to better evaluate strategies. The company can focus resources on higher-earning projects and reduce work on lower-performing initiatives.
Rather than making decisions based on guesswork and supposition, the company has access to critical data that fuels improved business decision-making.
Disaster Recovery and Redundancy
Many enterprise businesses struggle with information and expertise being locked in a silo. A single person may hold critical information or understand a required process. This can mean an illness, or a retirement can put the business at risk – a risk you may not even know is there until the business is crippled.
Especially today, businesses also need a back-up plan. They need to have redundancy built into their business planning to protect core operations when disaster strikes. You need to have documented workflow and businesses, and redundancy for all critical operations.
Managed services can help in both these situations. The review assessment the provider conducts will document processes for the business, helping to unravel and unlock the silos of information and data you may not even know are putting your business at risk. With the documentation produced in the assessment, you’ll have a way of sharing critical information in the business.
The resources of the provider can also serve as a back-up plan for the business. If disaster does hit, the provider can fill in where you need them, providing business continuity and an insurance policy.
Getting Started with Managed Services
Managed services projects start with a review process of existing operations.
This could include existing material needs, current suppliers, and the supply chain and distribution network. For technology managed services, a current run state will be calculated and determined. The review will also include current workflow and a management review.
During the review, inefficiencies will be identified. Expenses, both necessary and unnecessary will be determined, and the provide will conduct a cost analysis review.
For GO2, the result of the review process is a detailed savings analysis. Our goal is a guaranteed overall total cost reduction of 15% or more. We’ll provide a rapid 90-day implementation plan to get the customer up and running as quickly as possible, while eliminating questions of how it will work.
While every managed services implementation is different, and results can vary depending on the services and customer needs, clients typically achieve a significant return – sometimes an ROI as much as 7 to 9 times.
If you’d like to learn more about GO2 Partners Managed Services program, including our innovative 2020 Marketing Program, then contact us today. We’ve been helping businesses like yours reduce waste, speed operations, minimize errors, improve top-line revenue and reduce expenses through our managed services. Let’s see how we can help you.
