Maximize Your Productivity: Leveraging the Top 3 Benefits of Managed IT Services to Increase Organizational Efficiency

With rising prices, organizations are looking for ways to reduce costs without impacting services. One of the ways you can reduce costs is by leveraging managed IT services to increase productivity. Microsoft Office controls, cloud solutions, and advanced technologies have revolutionized the way organizations operate. Let’s look at how you can leverage the benefits of managed IT services and today’s productivity tools to drive efficiency, collaboration, and innovation.

The Top 3 Benefits of Managed IT Services that Boost Productivity

1. Embrace Microsoft 365 as a collaboration and productivity tool. Adopt the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity tools that includes popular applications like Teams, SharePoint, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and more. This integrated platform enables seamless collaboration and communication with a wealth of productivity tools included in the package, and Microsoft Teams is a hub for simplifying teamwork and communication. However, how you implement your solution is key to maximizing your productivity AND security. One of the biggest benefits of managed IT services is the provider’s expertise at configuring your solutions to maximize the value of these collaboration tools. Whether your team is in the office, working remotely, or traveling, choosing a managed IT services provider with Microsoft consulting experience provides you with access to experts who offer valuable guidance and strategic planning to assess your organization’s needs, align your technology solutions with your specific goals, and integrate these productivity tools with your IT infrastructure. They can make recommendations to streamline your business processes and provide training to help your team effectively integrate new tools into your workflow to maximize productivity, all while ensuring you don’t fall prey to misconfiguration errors that are a common cause of data breach. Some example of productivity gains include:
   1. Support and training for your entire team. Let’s face it, everyone’s inboxes are flooded these days. It’s too easy to miss important communications among way too many sales pitches. Whether you’re considering moving to Microsoft 365 or need help optimizing your current implementation, one of the benefits of managed IT services from the Cleartech Group is that we help organizations streamline communications, reorganize file storage structures, and provide training and support for Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint. These tools dramatically simplify collaboration (especially if parts of your team are remote or travel) and increase productivity. It’s amazing how much time you can save with Teams communications and reorganized file structures! There’s also the added bonus that our experienced team gets to know your business, helps you segment storage for efficiency, and also adds access controls using least privilege best practices to increase your cybersecurity!
   2. Integrate with Third-Party Applications. Another of the benefits of managed IT services is access to experts who can help you utilize Microsoft Power Platform to integrate Microsoft Office controls and cloud solutions with third-party applications. From automating manual data entry to enriching your dashboards with more information sources, expert third-party app integration can enhance your efficiency and connectivity.
   3. Streamline processes with Power Apps. One of the benefits of managed IT services is you can ask your provider to create custom applications tailored to your needs. For example, they can automate various HR processes, such as employee onboarding, performance evaluations, and document management, as well as create employee self-service portals that can dramatically increase your organizational efficiency.
   4. Automate Tasks with Microsoft Power Automate. An experienced provider can configure Microsoft Power Automate to offload repetitive tasks across Microsoft 365 applications. With the right planning and implementation, this can streamline workflows, save time, and reduce manual errors across your operations!
   5. Monitor Performance with Power BI’s powerful data visualization and business intelligence capabilities. A skilled managed IT services provider can create insightful dashboards to monitor key performance metrics and help you make informed decisions that maximize the efficiency of your operations.
2. Embrace the cost efficiency and collaboration benefits of the cloud. It’s no secret that cloud services are easy to scale, cost-effective, and reduce the burden on your IT team. It enables your organization to quickly scale your storage, infrastructure, backups, and other services to cost-effectively meet client demand. There are two main challenges with cloud storage.
   1. Cloud costs can add up quickly without savvy cost management. Another benefit of managed IT services is that your provider is likely experienced in optimizing cloud costs. From utilizing Azure cost management tools to monitor and control spending on cloud resources, to recommending alternative cloud solutions that meet your needs and budget, experience makes a huge difference in harnessing the benefits of cloud productivity while managing cost efficiencies.
   2. Cloud solutions work on a shared security model. You AND your cloud service provider jointly configure and manage your different aspects of your security. From identity and access management to encryption and key management, integrating the productivity of the cloud comes with security headaches. With more than 20% of error-related data breaches stemming from a misconfiguration, one of the benefits of managed IT services is that their experienced consultants can help you avoid this risk and ensure your Microsoft products are optimally configured for security and efficiency. This enables you to benefit from the productivity gains while outsourcing the management and security headaches.
3. Employee training and support. These productivity tools are only effective if your employees understand and use them correctly. Your managed IT services provider can provide employee training and field the support calls—especially while your team gets up to speed. One of the value-added benefits of using the Cleartech Group is that we offer friendly, US-based support and provide on-demand video training. Our support staff makes it easier for your team to understand how to move forward and enables visual training/explanation options as needed! In addition, our Microsoft certified specialists have superior technical expertise to better support your organization.

We hope we’ve given you a few ideas about how partnering with a managed IT services provider that has Microsoft and business productivity can maximize the efficiency of your organization. By harnessing the power of Microsoft Office controls, cloud solutions, and advanced technology, you can elevate your productivity and efficiency to new heights. Managed IT services play a pivotal role in ensuring these tools are effectively deployed, secured, and optimized. If you embrace these tips and foster a culture of technological innovation, your organization will not only stay ahead of the curve but thrive in the today’s digital world.

Contact us if you need help with managed IT services or Microsoft consulting. Our friendly team is ready to help!