As a business leader your main objective is to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to industry standards and best practices. This means you are constantly striving to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness with all your decisions. In many organizations the IT department is at the heart of the operation but balancing the task of working to lower overhead while evolving current technology can be a daunting mission. The cost of paying salaries, hardware/software maintenance, and licenses can be overwhelming for a growing company. Once an enterprise has invested in technology it can become difficult to continue allocating funds into keeping your IT department relevant. Imagine being able to free up your resources by not having to worry about IT related training, losses from system downtime, and even hardware/license renewals? Co-managed IT services work with your existing infrastructure to help you and your business refocus on more important tasks, while helping to fill-in the gaps and keep your IT infrastructure innovative. Through on-demand Co-managed services you can share anywhere from 10% or even 95% of your IT workload with professionals who dedicate their time and resources to serving your specific needs, keeping you ahead of the curve and in a good standing with your stakeholders. In this short read, we are going to highlight 3 reasons why you should opt for Co-managed IT services with NTG | Northern Technologies Group, and how we will help you grow your organization.
1. Staying relevant through Co-Managed Services:
Nobody knows your company better than your IT professional; they spend their time maintaining your existing infrastructure, but do they have enough time to keep up with industry innovations? Unless you have a large organization with highly specialized roles, inhouse IT professionals tend to wear many hats. One minute they are working on system issues, and another replacing hardware or doing software updates. In larger organizations time is distributed more evenly between multiple individuals, but the cost of industry certificate renewals and continuing education credits to keep them sharp does add up. For this reason, it is common for internal IT infrastructure staff to get behind on IT innovation very quickly. Having an IT partner in a co-managed services environment gives you access to IT professionals, across the whole spectrum of IT functional areas, who are Subject Matter Experts (SME) in their respective disciplines. By hiring NTG to assist your company with co-managed services you are supplementing your team with highly certified professionals who have a broadened knowledge of current industry standards and best practices. We have certified experts in Networking Infrastructure, Systems, Collab, Cyber Security, and Virtualization technologies. NTG’S INHOUSE CERTIFICATIONS INCLUDE • Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Engineers • Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) • PHD Business Management • VMware Architecture and Maintenance • Microsoft • AlienVault Certified Security Engineer (ACSE)
2. Customizable Tools available through Co-Managed Services:
Your IT professionals often juggle their time navigating between system errors and diagnosing network & hardware issues. They use the instruments they have available in their tool belts to manage the system, but not every company has the latest resources available to improve efficiency. It is for this reason an internal IT professional may spend a good portion of their time reacting to issues, rather than proactively preventing them. They are spending more of their time putting out fires, rather than finding the spark that is causing the fire. This same methodology also applies to hardware upgrades, as hardware is not usually replaced until it fails, which is costly in productivity and reputation loss. This applies for software license renewals as well, some companies wait until their licenses expire before renewing them, which could potentially change their licensing agreements or have a greater budgetary impact in back dated service charges. What if there was a way to prevent failures that lead to downtime which cause revenue loss? Surely, there must be a better way to minimize these losses while increasing accountability. One of NTG’s signature services is their monitoring dashboard. It is supported by a team of highly trained IT professionals who work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to assure that client performance is uninterrupted. The Network Operations Security Center (NOSC) takes a proactive approach in preventing downtime by actively monitoring the specific needs of each client. NTG can monitor anything from network status, cyber security, server capacity, hardware lifecycle, and license renewals to assure your organization never skips a beat. When a company’s system or network crashes, aside from stress associated with the scramble to fix it, your business activities are suspended potentially causing thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue and embarrassment. These losses can be prevented by Co-Managing your IT infrastructure through NTG in total cooperation with your current operation.
3. Cost Effectiveness in Co-Managed Services:
Having a state-of-the-art IT department will help any company become more efficient if they know how to use the tools correctly. Depending on the size of your organization and the complexity of your infrastructure, or the demand of the services offered your costs will vary accordingly. Complex infrastructures may require a team of specialized IT technicians or engineers, IT technicians and engineers may earn anywhere from $40-$100k+ annually. Hardware investments with appropriate lifecycle upgrades can range anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars, with additional annual upkeep costs. Keeping up with intermedial updates and software licenses requires time and foresight to prevent downtime. This raises the questions, are you getting the most for your investment? Is your staff overwhelmingly busy or twiddling their thumbs? Is your equipment up to date, could it be more cost effective to lease rather than purchase? Staying current and keeping up with innovation is an organizational goal, but it does come with a price tag. If your IT department is over saturated a Co-Managed service could help you accomplish more by complimenting your existing infrastructure while assisting in places where the help is needed. On the other hand, if you do not have enough demand to keep your IT staff busy, an on-demand Co-Managed service may help lower overhead by eliminating costly full-time salaries. NTG offers Co-Managed services where you can request full or partial assistance with a flexible “Pay as you need” structure. TLDR: It is important for organizations to remain current while maintaining and evolving their IT infrastructures. NTG’s Co-Managed services offer a helping hand in a pay as you need format, where you have access to highly skilled engineers & technicians, state of the art tools, and hardware/software upgrades. As a business operator you will gain peace of mind in knowing you never have to worry about obsolete technology or downtime. NTG Co-Managed services will help you grow your organization by keeping you up to date with best practices, while lowering your overhead to improve efficiency and minimize costly downtime.
