Organisations are more reliant than ever on technology to support their operations, with many utilising Microsoft 365 day-to-day to improve productivity. However, reliance on Microsoft 365 requires consistent management to mitigate risks, optimise performance, and drive value.

You may opt for an in-house IT team to administer your environment and respond to incidents. Alternatively, employees in other roles may assist with day-to-day IT tasks. There are some benefits to this approach, such as having an on-site presence to deal with incidents and requests as they arise in person. Some organisations may prefer to or need to maintain complete control over their services. Nevertheless, in-house Microsoft 365 management can be challenging.

Where can in-house Microsoft 365 management fall short?

Many organisations, even large enterprises, struggle to keep up with the rapid pace of Microsoft’s technology advancements and tend to become reactive rather than proactive with their innovation initiatives. This can hinder growth and competitiveness but also result in extended downtime and expenses. If deciding to handle Microsoft 365 management in-house you might face the following challenges:

Experience

Skill gaps: A lack of certified Microsoft 365 experts can lead to ineffective troubleshooting, inefficient processes and security vulnerabilities. An In-house team may not have the necessary expertise to configure Microsoft 365 optimally, leading to security risks, performance issues, and user frustration.

Time pressure

In-house IT teams often juggle multiple priorities, including maintenance, monitoring, issue resolution, change management, cloud management, and device/user management. There may be conflicting priorities within the backlog of tasks, resulting in some aspects of your IT estate being neglected.

Furthermore, the demand for support and troubleshooting can limit the time available for strategic initiatives.

Innovation

An in-house team may struggle to stay ahead of the latest tech innovations, best practices, and frequent Microsoft updates. Staying ahead of the curve can become challenging, leading to delayed adoption of new features and functionalities with a risk to your competitive advantage.

But additionally, maintaining your existing systems can be time-consuming. Knowing that a significant amount of time needs to be spent on routine maintenance tasks you are leaving little to no time for innovation.

Cost

It is important to consider the on-going costs involved with hiring, training and growing a full-time IT staff as for many organisations better value can be achieved through outsourcing.

The time and resources spent on managing Microsoft 365 could have been used towards other business objectives and opportunities.

Knowledge sharing

Another concern is knowledge of systems and processes being lost as employees leave the organisation. This again can risk the availability of systems and affect resolution times of incidents and requests – lowering productivity across the organisation.

Why Managed Services pay off: The benefits of Microsoft 365 Managed Services

Entering a managed service agreement with a provider to manage your Microsoft 365 environment can address most of these concerns.

1. Continuous Support to avoid downtime

Managed Services for Microsoft 365 can enable you to anticipate and address potential issues before they disrupt your operations. A Service Level Agreement (SLAs) will be agreed prior to establishing a relationship, giving organisations the confidence that their environment runs smoothly, and incidents will be responded to and resolved in a timely manner, avoiding any downtime.

2. Microsoft 365 Expertise

Through Microsoft 365 Managed Services, organisations gain access to a team of Microsoft certified experts, who not only can turn around requests and resolve issues swiftly, but also offer guidance to empower and educate employees of your organisation. A good managed service provider will also produce documentation for the procedures, standards and fixes for what your company’s Microsoft 365 environment can entail, which means support staff can often swiftly resolve what is raised by their clients.

3. Focus on your core business

As there is an alternative to in-house Microsoft 365 Management, many organisations are not required to devote considerable resources in to supporting their cloud environments, leaving you and your technical staff to focus on what truly matters to your organisation. Monitoring and routine maintenance can be handed over to your provider, freeing up valuable time to work on other initiatives.

4. Optimise expense

A Managed Services agreement can offer better value to your company than an in-house team. For small to medium sized organisations, the workload for IT staff may not justify the salary costs. Managed Services agreements can be more cost-effective, as you only pay for the time taken to complete the required work.

5. Latest Microsoft 365 technology

A provider should have insight of the latest updates coming to the Microsoft 365 product line-up and suggest methods your business can use to utilise newly released improvements. This ensures your organisation keeps digital productivity high by always being at the forefront of Microsoft developments.

6. Optimised Security

Routine monitoring by your provider can highlight any improvements to be made to your security posture. Alongside this, policies for devices, users and systems can be implemented, based on best practices.

Why should you consider Intelogy’s Outsourced IT offering?

Intelogy provides Outsourced IT as a Managed Services offering to provide you with confidence in your IT systems and reduce the burden of Microsoft 365 management for your organisation. Intelogy will work as a partner, alongside your existing team and find an approach that works for your organisation, whether you require full management across all services or support on just one area of Microsoft 365

We have a dedicated Managed Services practice that will manage and support your Microsoft 365 environment, and we offer access to subject matter experts covering the various areas of Microsoft 365.

Communication is handled through a Service Desk, where our team will provide updates on the progress of the work. You can be confident that incidents will be solved swiftly, contractually backed by our strong SLAs.

Outsourced IT clients receive pro-active monitoring of their environment to remediate concerns before these can impact your operations. This important feature of the offering not only allows your teams to devote their time elsewhere, but it is also instrumental in reducing the likelihood of service downtime, keeping your organisation productive and secure.

Intelogy’s Outsourced IT includes the handling of routine change requests in a secure and consistent manner. User support is also included within the agreement and our Managed Services team can produce guidance for your own internal teams, as they utilise the different areas of Microsoft 365.

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