You can always be certain that during the day-to-day running of your business, there will always be an IT issue that needs resolving. As sure as Night follows Day Follows Night, whether it’s a small issue or a large issue, something always needs fixing or updating.
You’re a business that’s paying for a Managed IT Services Provider and that means you are able to rely on the peace of mind that should anything go wrong, you have experienced and professional resources to call upon, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
In our previous blog, Managed IT Service Providers – What are they? we spoke about the benefits of having a Managed IT Services Provider and what they can provide to your business and your team of colleagues, be they in the same office in one location or located globally.
So, let’s ask another question to make things a little easier to understand: How does a Managed IT Service Provider support your business?
First of all, let’s define the term Remote IT Support:
“Remote IT Support is a way of delivering an IT service to clients without requiring an engineer on-site. It is the ability to remotely access and control devices anytime, anywhere using secure remote IT support software.”
In the post Pandemic world, working remotely from home has increased, it had to for many good reasons that we won’t outline here, chances are, as you read this, you too are working from home.
70% of the UK has fast reliable broadband available and when connected with the required security gateways to access systems and files online, this means that working from home became the required norm in most cases.
So instead of working in the office, where if you had an issue logging on or failed to connect to a printer locally, or in the worst-case scenario, your servers went down, a simple walk over to the IT Team to speak to them face to face about your issue is no longer an option.
Now, you need a raise a ticket and log this in the IT Support system, where a member of the IT Team provided by your chosen Managed IT Services Provider will pick this up, investigate the problem and liaise with your colleague to get the issue resolved.
All as you work from home whilst they work in a remote location, speaking with you in real-time and making sure that you understand both the issue and the fix so that this doesn’t happen again.
How does your Managed IT Services Provider do this?
Good question, let’s take a look at this next.
When agreeing on terms with your company’s chosen Managed IT Services Provider, they will come on board with an experienced and professional team of colleagues who have a wide range of IT knowledge.
The first step will be to make sure they are familiar with the hardware, software and systems that are in use, along with the various security measures that are in place. Whilst this takes place, they will also make any suggestions about how the systems and it requirements can be made more robust, as well as identify any weak links that will require improvements or updates so that your company’s systems are future-proofed.
They will also make sure that remote connectivity works, making use of programs such as Team Viewer, which will allow the IT Team with the users permission, to access their hardware remotely and see how they can resolve the issue without having to direct the colleague to do it themselves.
The CRM Example
Perhaps your company uses a CRM, or Customer Relationship Management system. In many cases, this will require regular updates to the original system and often, these are tested thoroughly to make sure that there is no recognised disruption to the current version of your CRM.
This is where your chosen Managed IT Services Provider will have a team in place to test, re-test and test again any updates to go in place. When the update to your CRM goes live, they will then provide something called “Hypercare” for a specific period.
“Hypercare” means that there is dedicated support available at all times of the day or night, ready to tackle any issue raised that may not have been discovered in testing. This can often be for a specific period of time, such as 48 hours or longer. As the old motorsport adage goes, “You can test all you want, but the only way you know if the car works is by putting it into a race.” Often, Hypercare can reveal other issues not discovered in testing and this is where the team will also work on these as a priority.
The objective here is that your workforce can continue without interruption in their daily tasks, using the systems available to them without issue and, if you are a customer-facing business, providing uninterrupted service to your customer base without them noticing any changes in your service.
The Ticket System Example
Often, your workforce can experience the smallest of issues, such as not being able to connect to a printer or forgetting a password to a system that’s required by the business but not used as often as others.
In either case, your work colleague will often raise the issue with either their team leader or manager. Their first action is then to instruct the colleague to raise a ticket on the business chosen Managed IT Services Provider system.
Once a ticket is raised, a reference number will be generated, and the ticket will go in a queue to be picked up by the next available agent.
As soon as the ticket is picked up by one of the team, they will contact the work colleague in a number of ways to understand what the issue is and also how this came about. This can be either by Phone, Video Call, Email or any number of other ways.
Remembering that your colleague is based at home in one location and the IT Team is based in another, remote connectivity is key and it’s vital that the issue and the reasons behind how the issue happened are identified accurately.
Not only will the IT colleague look to work and resolve the issue, but they will also then follow up with an investigation about why this came about and look to make sure that where possible, a fix for any future repeats of the issue can be put in place.
Fix it once, then make sure there’s a permanent solution that can be put in place for repeat occurrences.
The examples used in this piece show how much of a benefit the right chosen Managed IT Services Provider can be for your business. Having the right partner in place can be of huge benefit to your business.
Why choose Maximum Networks as your Managed IT Services Provider?
We have a wide range of IT desktop solutions and print services for any business across the UK. We supply the UK as a whole, including major cities such as London, Manchester, Bristol and Leeds.
Not only do we offer high-quality services across IT Services we offer business broadband solutions, telecommunications and much, much more.
Get in touch at https://www.maximumnetworks.co.uk/contact or call us on 0330 041 6308 today!