6 Reasons to Leverage Managed Services: 5. Procurement

Modern businesses can now make use of increasingly powerful technology solutions… as long as they have a means of obtaining and incorporating these solutions into their operations. The services that a managed service provider can deliver include procurement assistance. To wrap up our series on the value that managed services can provide, let’s discuss this aspect.

Why Proper IT Procurement is So Important

To effectively use your technology, you need to be sure that certain concerns are seen to. First, each component should have a purpose, fitting in with the other parts and functions of your infrastructure. This pertains to all of your solutions, any of the various pieces of business computing that any contemporary business should be using, such as:

Workstations and Other Hands-On Systems

Without the appropriate tools, your employees are going to find their productivity severely hampered - and when we say “appropriate,” we don’t just mean “most affordable.” You need to be prepared to make the investment into the tools and solutions that will actually serve your company’s needs.

Take a moment to consider the alternative, and assume that you managed to find what looked like a great deal… at least, at first glance. However, by bargain shopping, you may have very well purchased a system that doesn’t actually support your needs - or worse, purchased one that doesn’t work properly. Oh, and since you were shopping for your whole organization, you didn’t actually buy just one… more like one for each employee. 

If this were to happen, you’d find yourself either trying to fix your purchases, spending much more than you anticipated from such a “great deal,” or simply replacing them with another alternative.

A managed service provider can help you avoid this kind of situation, working with you and leveraging their vendor relationships to get you exactly what is best for your business at a fair price.

Software as a Service

Of course, in order to use your workstations productively, you need to have the right software to accomplish your business goals. This is where you have to be careful.

It is unfortunately uncommon for business decision makers to try and cut corners, exceeding the licensing of the particular software they need to use, if not just using a pirated copy of said software. While this strategy may seem effective for a time, it will eventually come back to bite them, whether through data breach, legal action and litigation from the software’s developers, and the bad optics that these circumstances can generate. 

Instead of participating in software piracy, turn to a managed service provider. A managed service provider can give you access to a much better option, known as Software as a Service (or SaaS). This effectively enables you to pay a predictable, scalable subscription price for the solutions your company needs, complete with updates and support.

Servers and Networking

Once your employees have the software they need for their tasks, and the workstations that will allow them to leverage it, they will need an infrastructure that will support the collaboration that is so common in the modern businesses. This infrastructure will also need to have the capability to scale to your business’ needs.

Setting up a network like this will require a practiced touch and the knowledge that comes from experience - without both, the result will be prone to downtime and assorted other issues. Working with a managed service provider ensures that your network is configured properly, and all of your solutions are resultantly efficient and effective.

Are You Interested in Managed Services?

Reach out to the professionals at SCW to learn more about the services that a managed service provider can deliver, or to ask about getting started. Call (509) 534-1530 today!