If your business is currently in the process of a digital transformation, you may have your eyes set on the horizon after the project has been completed. Of course, having a newly digital business is great for your customers, but do you have the internal resources to keep the digital experience fresh?
Maintenance for your business-critical site requires day to day upkeep and attention. But allocating internal resources for site maintenance can decrease bandwidth for other projects that impact brand growth. How can businesses balance these needs?
Enter: managed services.
What Is A Managed Service?
A managed service is any time-consuming or recurring task that is important to the business, but can be outsourced to maximize efficiency. These services include regular updates and maintenance on the backend of a digital site. Managed support services can take on tasks that use valuable internal resources, freeing up your employees to focus on strategic initiatives instead of mundane maintenance.
What Does A Managed Services Provider Do?
Managed services providers do more than just click “update.” Their responsibilities include making product updates, but also extend to platform configurations, checking for security concerns, and fine-tuning any technological glitches. They also are available long-term to help with any quick changes needed throughout the contract period. This means if a tech issue arises when you weren’t expecting it, you have a SWAT team ready to fix the issue and get your company back online fast.
While many managed services providers stop at website maintenance, managed services can also include value-added integrated marketing support. Landing page development, A/B testing, analytics, reporting, and SEO can be offloaded to external teams tomake data-driven marketing even easier.
What Are The Benefits Of Outsourcing Managed Services?
Here are a few of the biggest benefits of using a managed services provider, such as Hero Digital:
- Better Budget Forecasting: Managed services, when outsourced, are a fixed cost to the company. No need to anticipate changing internal resources and guessing ROI.
- Less Strain on Internal Resources: Your team has other responsibilities to tackle. Why not take “technology updates” off that list so they can prioritize initiatives they’re passionate about?
- High Efficiency: Having an external team increases the manpower of people working to meet your business’ ongoing needs. Plus, you have a team dedicated to constantly ensuring updates are made.
- Industry Experts: If you’re already a Hero Digital client, we know your business and the steps you’ve taken along your digital journey. Transferring the information to a different organization costs time and money. Let us continue the journey with you and our trained experts in technology implementation.
- Flexible Hours Model: Hero Digital managed support services put all hours of support into one bucket, rather than designating a specific number of hours for development or updates. This flexibility means businesses can spend hours on configuration, development, marketing or content optimization depending on their priorities.
How Do I Know If A Managed Service Provider Is Right For My Business?
The short answer is everyone with a digital presence could benefit from managed services. All businesses need their technology to operate efficiently, and can benefit from platform expertise. Let’s break it down a little further.
If you’re new to digital offerings, chances are you’ll want a guide along the way. Technology implementations and updates can take valuable hours from teams juggling multiple business priorities, which means extended launches and increased development time. Managed services make it easier to launch, iterate, and optimize your new technology. Even if no major implementations are happening, there’s still plenty of upkeep that can’t fall to the wayside if you want to stay competitive.
If your company has big goals for the years ahead and limited internal resources, managed services can help your employees focus on business operations. Your team shouldn’t have to choose between making tech updates and making progress towards a major company goal.
Think big picture. You may not need the extra support at this very moment, but what happens in six months, one year, or two years from now when you’ve grown your digital presence but haven’t done the upkeep to remain current? Managed services can keep those needs a priority and be your support when you need to dedicate a team to larger digital initiatives.
When Should I Contact A Managed Service Provider?
For companies in the planning stage of your digital implementation, you may want to look for implementation partners who have a managed services option. Launching a new digital platform is great, but it can be unnerving crossing that finish line and then hopping in the driver’s seat with no co-pilot.
If you’re close to launching your project and haven’t discussed post-launch plans, assess your needs and reach out to create a strategic roadmap that may include managed services.
If you’re still not sure whether managed services are right for your business, consider this: 85% of buyers said they’d head to a competitor if a supplier’s digital channel can’t keep up with their needs. Without regular maintenance, your entire digital ecosystem could shut down. No commerce, no financial services, no customer relationship management until it is fixed.
The entire issue could be avoided with a managed services provider. Why? Because their priority is to prevent a disaster like a shut down from occurring, and optimize your site to keep customers coming back for more.
No matter where you are in your path to crushing your digital goals, having a go-to partner can help with whatever challenges arise. Hero Digital is here to help every step of the way. Let’s get in touch.
