Establishing the full value from any IT investment, let alone managed IT, can be challenging.
Unlike a business commodity like metals or gas, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact revenue you gain from your IT investment. It’s clear that IT is undoubtedly crucial to your business’ success, since any network downtime can be potentially disastrous. But how exactly does proper IT infrastructure and regular maintenance contribute to your bottom line?
To find how managed IT generates tangible business benefits, we have to define the value of IT overall, as well as how to measure and maximize it.
Defining The Value Of IT
Proper IT maintenance brings two main benefits to the table: Operational excellence and Strategic excellence.
Operational excellence stems from optimizing the hardware and software your business uses on a daily basis. Proper IT management increases productivity, reduces downtime and supports every aspect of your business in operating at its best.
Strategic excellence comes from enabling your business’ competitive advantage. Do you pride yourself on having excellent customer service, or consistent same-day delivery? Many competitive advantages stem from proper IT investments.
For a business to define the value of IT, they must measure to impact of IT on key performance indicators (KPI’s) on a day-to-day basis, as well as the strategic impact of advantages enabled by IT investments.
Measuring The Value Of IT
The most straightforward way of measuring your business’ success is with the cost-to-revenue ratio. It answers the following questions:
How much are you spending? How much money are you making?
The economic value of managed IT kicks in by improving the cost-to-revenue ratio, either through the improvement of individual processes or through strategic improvements to your business.
In the case of managed IT, we tackle both ends of this spectrum. Not only do we ensure that your day-to-day operations proceed without a hitch, but we enable your IT staff to focus on on strategic projects.
It’s all about the operating ratio – it’s about spending money to save even more money.
When taking managed IT into account, you’ll see an improvement in performance at the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) level. IT infrastructure enables day-to-day tasks such as supply chain operations, communications and data storage while allowing your business to initiate strategic projects.
What will allow you to succeed in your industry? Same-day services, made-to-order solutions, better pricing? IT infrastructure is at the root of it all.
At the end of the day, managed IT through effective, targeted investment enables a strong operating ratio.
Maximizing The Value Of IT
Maximizing the value of your IT investment involves regular maintenance, to ensure daily productivity and quality of results.
Our managed IT service provides this, while drawing from a wealth of knowledge and procedures to help you streamline your day-to-day processes. Our IT support team is up-to-date on the latest malware and scams, working around the clock to proactively protect your data.
Do you have a centralized CRM tool? We may recommend using Outlook Customer Manager to centralize all customer data, if that is the ideal solution for your business.
Do you have a backup plan for unavoidable disasters? We provide disaster recovery best practices to keep your business running, even in dire times.
Ultimately, your IT infrastructure plays a key role in enabling and improving upon your business’ competitive advantage. Maximizing the value of your IT investment involves drawing from a team of qualified talent – which is what we provide at Quicktech.
By attacking problems and seeking business opportunities, managed IT helps integrate IT into the very core of your business strategy. It’s a strategic strength. Managed IT – Let us handle it.