Many companies are skeptical that they can actually save money by replacing their in-house teams with managed services partners. However, when companies successfully partner with a managed services provider, their IT costs are reduced by 25 to 45 percent. And their operational efficiency increases by up to 65%, according to a 2021 report from Mordor Intelligence. Not only do managed services partners offer expertise and experience that in-house teams cannot match, but managed services partners also provide superior support at a lower cost. 

The key to managed services partners’ unique value proposition is that they offer specialized support when companies need it, in precisely the amount they need. The best managed services partners provide flexible, on-demand options, where unused service hours carry forward and work requests automatically get routed to highly specialized teams that are already familiar with the org. In particular, when it comes to support for Salesforce, managed services partners offer more than just general Admin-level support; they readily provide access to developers, business analysts, operations experts, and success managers. Best of all, all of this expertise is available without having to pay for even one additional full-time equivalent employee (FTE). Let’s explore five key ways that retaining a managed services partner for Salesforce support actually saves a company money:

 

Managed services partners eliminate recruitment and hiring costs

For every FTE that a company hires, there are high costs to the organization—beyond just the employee’s own compensation package. HR must recruit, interview, and onboard the employee. IT must configure network access and provision hardware and software assets to the employee. These employee acquisition costs add up fast. And after all this investment, there’s no guarantee how long the employee will stay—until the entire cycle must be repeated. Because managed services partners are not employees, all of these expenses are eliminated. Moreover, when there’s turnover within the managed services provider’s organization, the organization can readily shift work to another member of its team, ensuring an uninterrupted transition.

 

Managed services partners boost user adoption

When companies make strategic investments in digital transformation, the success of these technology initiatives is dependent on whether users actually adopt and use the systems and tools as designed. Companies generally lack real-world experience in encouraging user adoption of a specific new technology, nor how to evaluate if their user-adoption strategies are working as intended. Managed services partners, by contrast, specialize in optimizing user adoption of a technology platform like Salesforce. They know how to manage organizational change to achieve optimal outcomes, and they know when to pivot or intervene if things start to veer off course.

 

Managed services partners know how to use data to achieve greater efficiencies

A sales ecosystem like Salesforce is robust not just because of its ability to streamline and automate vital sales-related processes, but also because it continuously mines data to generate business intelligence about how to operate more efficiently. The challenge for the average in-house Salesforce team is figuring out how to configure Salesforce’s data analytics capabilities to generate these insights. While a Salesforce implementation partner is key to the initial configuration work, a managed services partner will be much more adept at updating data analytics capabilities as business needs and opportunities evolve over time. Managed services partners have an intuitive sense of how to architect data collection and analysis workflows that are aligned with business goals.

 

Managed services partners have a strong sense of how to maximize ROI

Technology platforms like Salesforce are ecosystems that are constantly evolving. Not only does this ecosystem require continuous investment to troubleshoot and update various components, but the ecosystem ideally should be connected and integrated with multiple additional systems, from ERP to accounting programs. All of these evolutions are designed to further streamline operations over time, improve the employee and customer experience, and maximize ROI. A managed services provider is in a much better position than an in-house team to advise companies on how to proceed with these improvements. Specifically, a managed services partner can speak from experience in recommending when to move forward with enhancements, exactly what to move forward with to maximize ROI opportunities, and how to stay ahead of the competition when moving forward.

 

Managed services partners are adept at risk and threat mitigation

Every company’s technology infrastructure is under continuous threat. The threat comes internally from employees who don’t take proper precautions with security or deviate from best practices in ways that elevate risks to the organization. The danger also comes from the outside—cybersecurity attacks, regulatory audits, and problematic actions by partners and vendors. While an in-house team is limited in its ability to monitor, foresee, and respond to these risks, a managed services partner has the deep experience necessary to mitigate risks and threats optimally. Over the long run, every crisis or potential crisis that can be avoided becomes money saved.

 

Managed services partners are crucial to keeping an organization’s technology infrastructure firing on all cylinders. When an organization invests in managed services, its recruitment and hiring expenses are dramatically reduced, its user adoption rates for technology go up, its use of data analytics improves, it gains the perspectives necessary to maximize ROI opportunities, and it becomes much better at mitigating risks and threats.

Simplus exists to help companies unlock the full potential of their Salesforce investments—not just through initial implementation support, but also through a range of flexible, customizable Strategic Services solutions, our managed services wing. To learn more about how managed services can help you reduce operating expenses and improve your operations over time, please reach out to us today. We look forward to showing you why you need more than an in-house team to support your Salesforce ecosystem optimally.