Why You Can’t Live Without Managed Services
In 2022, Communication Company started introducing its ComCare Managed Services suite of programs to ensure customers’ systems are up-to-date, serviced, and functioning at all times.
Many customers, however, need to understand why these services are critical. It has become a matter of not “if” a managed services contract is in place - it’s recognizing that these are services you shouldn’t be without.
Today’s systems integration has become complex, and with Artificial Intelligence being here to stay in some shape or form, it is even more important to ensure that your systems are connected, updated, and monitored at all times.
As a life safety and security integrator, Communication Company provides fire safety systems, nurse call, mass communication, surveillance, door access, CCTV, interactive display, detection, and AV systems. In recent years, it has become more critical that systems connect and communicate with one another. The need for this integration is only increasing. The systems have become more sophisticated and complex to independently update and manage for customer team members who usually deal with user and application issues throughout the day. Basic system setup, updates, and integrations have become an expectation to function well and not disrupt daily operations routinely.
As well noted in NSCA’s Pivot Toward Managed Services article, the relationship between integrators and our customers is changing. Integrators must assess their customers’ needs and understand which managed services are required. These services have become vital for our customers.
Here are some takeaways:
Remote Support Customers should invest in a managed services model for remote support to their life, safety, and security systems. One of the biggest advantages of this is controlling costs, as this is a standard monthly operating cost. It will allow customers to hire the talent they need for their specific industry, as opposed to needing a full internal IT staff to manage systems they often are not specialized in. It all comes back to the fact that much of the technology integrators install has become mission-critical; plus, it keeps employees connected. That’s why managed services are key. “Many of these plans have SLAs associated with them to ensure that the issue is fixed in a timely matter so business can resume. There are programs that offer life expectancy and usage of the same equipment for future budget planning and refresh cycles,” states Tina Peters, executive vice president at SVT.
Continuous Training and Reorientation “Many of our customers choose a managed service agreement due to turnover in staff,” says Sandy Dinklage, vice president of professional services at ECC. Her company provides access to unlimited system training and reorientation of the system for new staff members, as well as annual training for existing team members. This is something that we at Communication Company find to be a routine need that we can more efficiently provide while freeing our customers’ staff members to take care of daily tasks.
Understand Customers’ Needs We find the corporate enterprise customer is looking for a 24/7 monitoring solution for life safety and security software platforms. “There are solutions available from the partner community that can be embedded into a helpdesk with a common workflow,” says Don Mastro, executive vice president of global sales for AVI Systems. “Most instances can be solved remotely before any meeting with an alert system through the software platform. Data analytics are developed from the monitoring platform and reviewed quarterly in a business review.” This provides a great opportunity to provide solutions to incidents and proactive service in the future.
Semi-Annual Recertification/Firmware Upgrades with Comprehensive Checklists “Our customers like that we regularly perform a recertification on their system to ensure functionality and provide them with a report on the status of each piece of equipment,” Dinklage says. “This helps reassure the customer that their systems receive applicable updates to the operating system that helps it perform optimally. Customers want to be onsite when we perform these tests to ask questions about the system.”
It wasn’t long ago that managed services were a nice-to-have service for our customers. The conversation has certainly shifted. AV and security integrators offer solutions so important to their customers that the business case for managed services support is beyond logical.
By providing intermittent, ongoing support, we can be proactive and prevent breakage in customer systems. It’s also a good thing that managed services remain a powerful way to deepen our understanding of customer needs and help incrementally and most cost-effectively evolve systems to changing requirements as they occur rather than wait for the need or expensive overhauls.