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5 Ways IT Managed Services Can Make Your Business More Competitive
Does your firm need to become more competitive? Are you having difficulties determining how to stand out? Learn how award-winning IT support and services can help.
Developing and sustaining a competitive advantage is crucial for any organization. A competitive advantage not only helps maintain long-term financial sustainability but also creates value for clients and end-users. According to Joe Garfinkle of Garfinkle Executive Coaching, there are seven different strategies organizations can use to create a competitive advantage. Those strategies include cost leadership, differentiation, innovation, operational effectiveness, technology, adaptability, and information. While many organizations usually leverage one of these strategies, it is possible to utilize more than one. Securing information technology-related partnerships is an efficient way to combine several of these strategies, particularly those related to technology, information, innovation, differentiation, and operational effectiveness.
Technology
The creation and use of new technologies can help businesses stay ahead of the competition. Even if the technology already exists, finding new ways to use that technology or combine more than one existing technology in novel ways can create value. This can even be accomplished through partnerships with other firms or firms that specialize in IT managed services and support. Recently Lenovo and Intel formed a partnership related to the further development of AI-related offerings. Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, was quoted as saying “this definitely adds some uniqueness to Lenovo’s solutions.”
Information
A competitive advantage grounded in an information strategy is about developing superior skills and acquiring unique knowledge through technology and data. IT managed services and support can provide firms with access to solutions that assess, monitor, and leverage data. IT services and support can also usher in new technology-related solutions and technical perspectives that may have been previously overlooked.
Innovation
An innovation strategy related to developing a competitive advantage is about finding new ways to accomplish processes, make and deliver products, add value to the supply chain, provide value-added services, or solve end-users problems. Award-winning IT services and support can shift leaders’ and employees’ focuses towards their areas of expertise while delivering value-added solutions to the firm’s end users. New processes can be created and existing ones can be streamlined in new ways to help a business become more innovative, leading to differentiation in the eyes of the consumer. The recently formed partnership between Lenovo and Intel is partially an innovation-based strategy that “combines the best of both companies’ innovations to drive our customers’ progress forward even faster,” according to Intel’s executive vice president and general manager of the Data Center Group, Navin Shenoy.
Differentiation
In practice, differentiation creates unique value, identity, or attribute to a firm’s offerings. A company’s brand and brand name may serve as a means of differentiation, which can be used to leverage its marketing strategy and marketing communications. Differentiation typically stems from a company’s unique strengths and skills that the competition either does not have or is deficient in. IT managed services and support can either create or enhance a firm’s unique strengths. For instance, if the company already known for its world-class end-user support but does not have the resources to expand that support into a new market? Award-winning IT support can provide those resources while ensuring end-users in the new market receive a seamless support experience.
Operational Effectiveness
Operational effectiveness is often tied to innovation, but it can also mean finding ways to do more with less. Efficiency can also mean streamlining processes to save costs while increasing productivity. IT managed services and support can create operational effectiveness by finding areas of redundancy, processes that can be strengthened, and areas of opportunity. One of the main advantages of award-winning IT services and support is that it can help reduce labor costs while still delivering the level of service and support end users demand. In many cases, IT managed services can lend expertise to a firm that no longer has enough resources to acquire, maintain, and deliver the latest technology-based solutions. Assessing a firm’s current state, current needs, and objectives is a core component of what IT managed services can help accomplish. Shifting the burden of procuring, maintaining, and supporting the infrastructure necessary to deliver innovative support and solutions to end users is another core component of what IT managed services can do.