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It’s true that all businesses have IT requirements, but manufacturers have their own unique challenges. In addition to the traditional technology concerns facing other organizations, manufacturing IT departments often struggle to support a global organization from a single location with a finite staff and budget. Simultaneously, they’re expected to build competitive advantage and profitability for the business through the creative use of both IT tools and technical prowess.

Adding infrastructure and personnel to keep things running smoothly while they concentrate on new business-boosting goals may be too costly. But outsourcing core IT management functions to an experienced managed services provider may offer a solution.  In fact, leveraging the talent of a managed services provider is a good way to take the burden of day-to-day monitoring and incident remediation off the IT team’s shoulders, freeing them to focus on more strategic tasks.

Seven Reasons Manufacturers Need Managed Services

Internal IT resources are often so preoccupied with just keeping the proverbial lights on that they have no time for the kinds of strategic IT initiatives the company needs to compete. But being responsible for IT doesn’t mean you have to perform every function in house. Managed services providers have grown into specialized teams of highly trained service professionals who can provide reliable, ITIL-based, SLA-backed remote monitoring and management of a manufacturer’s entire IT infrastructure, regardless of where in the world that infrastructure resides, and deliver time savings, predictable costs and guaranteed uptime among other advantages that free the manufacturer’s internal IT team for more creative, business-building tasks. Here are just a few ways that an experienced managed services provider can help:

  1. Skilled Resources: With an experienced managed services partner, manufacturers gain access to technologists with high-level certifications and diverse experiences that can help them balance their IT needs with productively running a manufacturing business.
  2. Lower Costs: These experienced, efficient technology experts are likely a fraction of the cost of full-time employees staffed round the clock thanks to managed services’ shared resource model.
  3. Best Practices: No more cutting corners; professional managed services providers (MSPs) adhere to proven industry standards like the Information Technology Infrastructure Library’s (ITIL v3) best practices; those that operate on a global basis should also be able to deliver a common services platform that is consistent across all geographies, yet is flexible enough to meet unique regional needs.
  4. Proactive vs. Reactive Management: MSPs can offer detailed performance reviews that allow manufacturers to examine operational analytics and address issues proactively before a major service outage is experienced.
  5. Guaranteed Uptime: Using a managed services provider reduces the risk of downtime by properly managing compute, storage, and fixed network assets. All changes are captured in an auditable configuration management database (CMDB) for compliance purposes, and stringent SLAs can be custom tailored to the organization’s resiliency needs.
  6. Predictable Costs: By embracing an outsourced service model, manufacturers can simplify budgeting with more predictable monthly costs for technology management.
  7. Time Savings: Knowing that they have a robust, reliable infrastructure in place puts the manufacturer’s struggle of prioritizing IT needs in the past; previously overworked IT employees can now redirect their efforts to more value-added services, focusing their time and attention on supporting business initiatives and building competitive advantage.

Need help deciding where to start?  Watch a brief video to learn what managed services is all about and how it works. Then visit our manufacturing microsite where you can download a “managed services for manufacturers” data sheet. Need help comparing managed services providers? You can use our Managed Services Checklist.