It’s a common business practice to hire a third-party agency to perform specific tasks, such as managing the cloud platform, updating the business site, maintaining the IT infrastructure, and answering customer queries. The idea behind this strategy is to buy time with money since you no longer have to worry about these tasks you would otherwise have spent your time on.
These solutions are what experts call managed services. While, in theory, relying on managed services is profitable, it’s not always viable, as it generally depends on the scale of your business and your needs.
Perhaps you cannot afford managed services, or maybe you can still handle all your business matters without any issues. Either way, there may be times outsourcing business functions may be a worthwhile option to consider. There may also be instances when it’s not. So, that begs the question, when do managing services make sense for your business? Read on to find out.
1. You Have Surplus Every Month
If you still have funds left after paying your employees and all other business expenses, there are two things you can usually do with the surplus. You can either invest in technology or services that can make your and your employees’ job easier, or you can scale your business by hiring more people or getting a bigger office or site. If you choose to do the former, managed services are one of your investment options.
Below are some examples of managed services you can find:
- Customer support
- Data entry
- Finance and Accounting
- HR and recruitment
- IT services
- Marketing and lead generation (e.g., cold calling, telemarketing, etc.)
Keep in mind that if you do opt for managed IT services, there are various types under this category. You might want to look up managed IT services definition to help you gain more insights into it before making a decision.
But to conclude, it can be a wise investment to look into managed services if your business has an extra budget. It can help streamline your operations and give you more time to focus on other business aspects.
2. Your Budget Is Wearing Thin
Yes, it may seem counterproductive to the previous point, but another scenario where managed services make sense is when your budget is a bit lacking. To be precise, it’s when you don’t have enough resources but still need to invest in new technologies, people, or both. That’s because managed services are objectively more cost-efficient than your alternative options.
For example, if you need four more employees for customer support, the cost of hiring and possibly training those four people is often higher than hiring a managed service provider. Similarly, if you need a bunch of cloud software, it typically costs more to buy the software yourself than to hire a managed service agency that uses that software. Not to mention if you go the managed service route, you can avoid the hassle of training your employees to use the software. Put simply, managed services can be time- and cost-efficient.
3. You Don’t Have Enough Manpower Or Time
As your business grows, the number of tasks you and your employees have to handle will also increase. At some point, you’ll find that you no longer have enough time or manpower to complete all the tasks in time. Perhaps you can no longer take the time to update your website’s content, or maybe your employees can no longer perform software updates due to backlog.
If your business ever comes to this point, it’s a sign that you need to invest in something to make your job easier, and managed services are on top of the list as far as that’s concerned.
4. You’re Planning To Scale The Business
Your business doesn’t have to be in a pinch for managed services to make sense. If you intend to scale your business, there’s a chance you’ll encounter challenges along the way. So, as a precautionary measure, it’s best to hire managed service providers before you scale the business, whether it’s through opening another branch or entering a new market.
In the case of the latter, for example, you can hire a managed service provider to advertise your new product. That way, you don’t have to make your existing advertising team do more work and potentially compromise their efficiency and productivity. This applies to other business processes.
5. A Specific Department Isn’t Doing Well
Suppose your business is doing well in sales, but there are numerous complaints about customer service. In that case, it’s apparent that your sales team is doing well, but the customer support department is not so much. It could be due to backlogs and an influx of customer queries or the lack of staff to handle concerns.
That’s one scenario where managed customer support services make sense for your business. Of course, this isn’t limited to customer support. If a specific department isn’t performing as well as you want them to, you can explore the option of working with an agency or service provider to support your internal team with their functions.
Summing It Up
Managed services can help your business in many ways. However, there are cases wherein you may be wondering if outsourcing certain business functions is the right decision. In this post, we’ve outlined scenarios where managed services make sense. For instance, if you have extra funds to spare, you want to save resources on recruitment or technologies, you need more staff and time, you want to scale the business, and you want to scale the business.
Once you realize that one or more of these five scenarios are currently happening in your business, it may be time to consider managed services.
