Top 5 Benefits of Managed Support for Communications

Why Managed Support for Communications is the Right Move for Your Business

Whatever your business and area of expertise, effective internal and external communications beyond simple voice services are essential if you wish to drive your business forward, bolster productivity and maintain a healthy relationship with your clients and customers. Sadly, though, businesses can struggle when an unexpected technical mishap causes communications to stagger or go down entirely. This leads to lost communications and a severe decline in productivity and profits to boot.

Some businesses opt to hire an internal staff member to manage their communications systems, to avoid scenarios such as these, but this isn’t always the most reasonable choice to benefit business expenses or resources. Hiring a new worker is a costly venture, setting businesses back several thousand pounds per year that could have been invested elsewhere to help the business grow.

Managed support for communications, on the other hand, allows businesses to place the running and security of their communications systems in the hands of trained, reliable external professionals who are experienced in dealing with such technologies on a wide scale. Not only does this relieve financial pressures for businesses with a cost-effective solution, but it also helps them resolve problems potentially far quicker than an in-house staff member would have been able to, thanks to having a full team of experts on-side – along with many other benefits.

In this blog, we’re going to highlight the key benefits of managed support for business communications and explain why it’s a good idea to invest in the service for your business if you haven’t already.

1) Enhanced Reliability and Uptime 

According to a survey by Information Technology Intelligence Consulting, 93% of large enterprises report the costs of downtime exceeding $300,000 per hour. While those figures will not be the same for every business, they emphasise the potential catastrophic losses all businesses face as a result of stalling communications and business processes.

When communications come to a screeching halt, all areas of a business are forced to put their movements on hold until a solution is found. Unfortunately, if the issue is particularly critical, internal staff may struggle to solve the issue, creating a domino effect that can cost the business countless hours of productivity and profits. 

However, with managed services, external support technicians work to monitor and maintain communications systems, making continuous alterations and minor fixes regularly, ensuring small problems don’t turn into bigger issues later down the line. Proactive support and monitoring of communications systems are used to detect oncoming issues and resolve them before they’re able to cause downtime – all without a business needing to reach out for technical help, saving time and ensuring optimal business operations.

Redundancy and failover systems are also common elements of managed communications services. According to data from market intelligence firm IDC, featured in an article by Workspace, 40% of SMEs don’t back up their data at all, creating a potentially explosive situation in the event of a data catastrophe. This can create even more problems in the event data powering a communications system goes dark.

However, most managed service providers can create backups of not just data, but entire digital communication environments for businesses opting for cloud-hosted communications systems, helping to minimise disruptions. Businesses that choose to back up their data via a third party in this way can often be operational again in a matter of minutes, instead of hours, days or weeks, limiting losses of productivity or profits.

2) Reducing Overhead Costs and Budget Predictability

In the current economic climate, businesses are doing everything they can to cut costs while still delivering a stellar level of service for their clients and customers. While not one of the most obvious ways to achieve this, onboarding-managed support for communications can actually prove to be a huge cost-saving venture, despite the monthly subscription.

As we’ve already discussed, hiring an external provider to handle communications support can be infinitely cheaper than hiring a full-time staff member to serve the same purpose. We’ve also already mentioned the excessive costs involved in accruing downtime, and how having external experts at your disposal can help avoid this entirely.

But beyond the above, managed support for communications also helps to streamline monthly communications expenses. By not having to deal with added costs involved with hiring engineers to solve problems, or having to calculate potential losses, finance managers can have a far clearer picture of the profits and outgoings of a business, saving them time and countless headaches.

With managed support for communications, businesses can benefit from a single, easy-to-understand monthly bill with consistently fixed fees, as opposed to fluctuating fees charged by other external parties who need to be brought in every time an issue needs to be solved. By reducing these needs, businesses can benefit from easier budgeting and financial planning, allowing them to pre-allocate funds and resources into other, more pressing areas of the business, pushing the business forward without being held back by constant maintenance costs.

3) Access to Expertise and Advanced Technologies

Depending on the nature of a business, there may already be one or more individuals working in-house with a degree of technology experience, with businesses relying on these people to help when they’ve run into technical issues with their communications network. At the opposite end of the spectrum, businesses may have been shooting in the dark and relying solely on their own knowledge and details they find on the internet to solve technical issues when they strike.

Either way, neither of these scenarios are preferable and will lead to significant stalling of business processes, unless someone with the correct level of skills and expertise is available to come to the rescue. With a managed service provider, this is exactly what you’d receive, and then some.

Third-party managed support – like the support provided by Elite Group – offers businesses access to a team of skilled technical professionals with specialised skills in troubleshooting with specific emphasis on communications systems. Having someone who is fully focused and proficient in assisting with communications-related issues will help you resolve those issues much faster, get back to work quicker and remain profitable for longer. Whereas a ‘Jack-of-all-trades’ won’t be able to provide the same level of expertise or resolutions.

Our dedicated team of support technicians undergo continuous training and achieve certifications relevant to their areas of speciality – in this case, business communications. This means our service desk can offer you the most up-to-date solutions. Plus, thanks to our wide array of skills and connections, we’re able to help you utilise the most cutting-edge communications technologies and best practices, helping you to stay ahead of technological advancements and trends, to not only resolve issues quicker but to minimise the risk of serious issues rearing their heads at all.

4) Improved Security and Compliance

According to data from the Cyber Security Breaches Survey 2024 by the UK Government, approximately 50% of all UK businesses have reported suffering a cyber attack or breach in the twelve months prior to the survey. Given that this is up by over ten per cent when compared to the same survey from the previous year, the need for reliable and robust cyber security measures has never been clearer.

Rather than relying on their own experience and initiative, when a business onboards managed support for communications, they’ll also benefit from the enhanced security measures implemented by the provider. These security measures go above and beyond the call of duty offered by standard off-the-shelf security protocols, like consumer anti-virus software, for more rugged and complex security protocols and standards befitting a business that works with sensitive customer data.

Protocols such as multi-factor authentication are commonplace now but are still infinitely useful in the world of cloud communications, such as unified communications. But beyond this, now that many communications systems are powered by the internet, with virtual meetings occurring via platforms such as Microsoft Teams every day, security protocols must stay on top of rising network threats and evolving breach methods if information is to be kept fully private. Today, businesses can expect such innovations as intelligent firewalls and live monitoring of networks, flagging potential cyber threats and neutralising them before they can even begin to cause any wider damage.

Regular security audits and vulnerability assessments mean that businesses needn’t worry about the upkeep of their cyber security. By partnering with a reliable managed support provider, any security concerns are handled by the third party, allowing employees and managers to breathe a sigh of relief, knowing a very high-pressure task is taken off of their ‘to-do’ list and is in the hands of trained professionals.

Also, businesses can benefit from assistance in meeting compliance standards with all relevant regulations, including GDPR and more. Managed support providers are highly knowledgeable and can give businesses guidance on how best to meet such standards without running the risk of accidentally falling outside of these boundaries. This is an ongoing process, meaning businesses will be kept up to date with whatever changing regulations and standards they must adhere to. 

5) Scalability and Flexibility

As businesses shift in size, their communications systems need to follow suit to meet the increased demands of both colleagues and customers. In the age of analogue communications, scaling phone systems proved to be a time-consuming and costly endeavour; one which businesses could spend a fortune on while also needing to make drastic alterations to existing office setups in-house, including rewiring and the installation of new hard line-based tech. However, in the age of digital communications, scalable solutions have become much more achievable, though businesses still need the correct assistance to enjoy a seamless process.

With the help of a third-party managed support provider, businesses can easily scale their services up and down as necessary, adding or removing users, where appropriate, to meet staff figures. This ensures businesses only ever need to subscribe to the number of users they need to meet their needs, saving money. Speaking of which, managed support providers can also tailor communications solutions and technology to meet specific business needs, rather than offering an over-arching service package that may contain elements that simply aren’t needed. These needs can shift quickly depending on a variety of factors, including market conditions, sales figures and a host of other variables – all of which can be best served with an adaptable communications system and communications support that can be altered whenever the situation calls for it.

Take the Stress Out of Managing Your Solutions with Elite Group

If you’re looking for managed support for your business’s communications, look no further than the expert team at Elite Group. With decades of combined experience among our staff and two decades as a company, we’re your ideal choice when it comes to support for your business communications.

With a team of highly experienced specialists and engineers, all of whom uphold numerous industry-standard accreditations, you’ll always have a technical expert you can rely on. You’ll also be assigned a dedicated account manager whose role it will be to oversee your account in fine detail, as well as monitor your communications processes to suggest handy improvements as and when they become available or needed within your business. Plus, with out-of-hours support and technical assistance available around the clock, you’ll always have the ability to reach out for the solutions you desperately need, whatever time you need them.

To find out more about managed support for communications from Elite Group, speak with an Elite expert today.