Unlocking Success: Managed Connectivity Solutions

In today’s data-driven business landscape, having a reliable communication network is crucial. Many organizations, however, aren’t utilizing their existing infrastructure to its full potential. Instead of capitalizing on the secure, cost-effective nature of digital communication technologies, far too many companies are bogged down by the potentially detrimental impact of system-wide fragmentation, departmental isolation, and security concerns due to knowledge gaps and oversight.  

Business owners and decision-makers recognizing the importance of peak operational performance are easing the burden on their IT teams by investing in fully managed connectivity solutions. With the right service provider, your organization is supported by a cost-effective, customized, sustainable network capable of accommodating your current and future business needs.

An Overview of Managed Connectivity Solutions: The Advantages of Outsourcing Your Network  

As business owners invest in the many technologies needed to accommodate multichannel communication, there’s been a marked uptick in required resources to ensure network efficiency and system reliability. Even with skilled IT teams on staff, many companies find it increasingly essential to contract local technicians to fill knowledge gaps and solve complex issues that arise from the disconnect between disparate analog and digital technologies.  

Service providers offering managed connectivity solutions help their clients reduce (or eliminate) the need to hire additional staff or outside help. Managed service providers (MSPs) optimize communications between business locations, manage all network connections and connectivity services, and more. 

In other words, business owners can outsource the entirety of their networking infrastructure to expert, third-party service providers who can provide everything they need to streamline their business operations. Managed connectivity providers offer the ideal combination of services and solutions as technologies advance and evolve.  

How Managed Connectivity Resolves Network Pain Points

Many companies rely on services from multiple carriers and platform providers to extend the functionality of their legacy hardware, and they end up overspending on inefficient solutions running on an unsustainable network. While organizations may still manage numerous software as a service (SaaS) applications, the complexity of network services alone can be overwhelming. 

For instance, a company with offices in multiple locations might need to work with different internet service providers for each office, such as one provider in New York and another in London. This fragmented approach leads to multiple invoices, various points of contact, and disparate monitoring systems for their network services. This invoicing complexity creates a challenging proposition that takes considerable resources to manage.

Over time, the same companies striving to support multiple ways of working across diverse geographic locations continue to pay for services they’ve replaced because they don’t have a clear view of their tech inventory. Essentially, there’s little to no transparency. 

Managed service providers specialize in connectivity and help their clients overcome these common pain points (and others) with a compelling range of services and solutions that free up resources for more profitable endeavors and ensure long-term success.

Performing a Comprehensive Assessment

The right MSPs are adept at getting business networks from where they are to where they need to be while helping their clients get the most value from their investments. Adopting managed connectivity solutions provides multiple opportunities for business owners to reduce the overall cost of monitoring, maintaining, and optimizing their networks. With the right partnership, business decision-makers can count on getting a detailed evaluation of their current configurations from an industry expert.

After completing a comprehensive assessment of the architecture, including network devices, security features, and on-site hardware, MSPs make detailed recommendations for cost-effective improvements and optimizations. The knowledge gained by the time invested in analysis ensures both parties understand the cause of any performance inefficiencies, including issues with network speed, stability, and silos. 

The MSP can also identify blind spots that could allow unauthorized access to sensitive data. For heightened protection and security, the MSP performs all necessary and authorized upgrades.  

Providing a Single Point of Contact  

Managing multiple service contracts and invoices from carriers disbursed over multiple locations takes time and a considerable number of payroll hours. Overcharges are easily (and often) missed because connectivity services and their billing terms can be so complex that monthly line-by-line invoice analysis is inefficient and, therefore, determined to be cost prohibitive.

With managed solutions and services, business owners and their account administrators have a single point of contact for all their contracted services and one simplified invoice. Transparency is restored. In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of every device and service connecting their client’s network, experienced managed service providers can often assist with dispute resolution, expense management optimization, and strategic planning when their clients are ready to expand.  

Leveraging Access to Multiple Connectivity Solutions

Organizations with a global reach don’t have the luxury of choosing a single type of communication technology to ensure connectivity. The technologies that various service areas can support can vary considerably, as can the regulatory standards governing privacy laws and data security. Their network infrastructures must be flexible enough to accommodate the diverse communication protocols specific to each service area.

MSPs specializing in managed connectivity solutions leverage multiple service options to accommodate the unique needs of organizations with locations disbursed across diverse geographic locations. 

Options include public and private wide area networks (WAN), multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), and wireless global broadband. The best top-tier service providers leverage long-standing relationships with local internet service providers (ISPs) and legacy phone service providers (PSTNs) to their client’s financial advantage.

Providing Proactive 24/7/365 Network Monitoring

With fully managed connectivity, business owners have cutting-edge automation monitoring their network proactively every hour of every day in real time. Top-tier MSPs deploy enhanced security systems that identify and deter suspicious activity and cybersecurity threats across all services, devices, and providers, regardless of their distances and technical disparities.

That advanced, often AI-enhanced technology is supported by certified, expert-level IT professionals prepared to alert their clients in the event of any suspected performance anomaly or security threat. The MSP’s skilled team of specialists works diligently behind the scenes to resolve potential issues before situations escalate. This proactive approach helps businesses avoid distractions, interruptions, or crisis-level disruptions.  

Ensuring Service Level Flexibility

Some industries require an entirely different set of service levels and security standards than others. Organizations enlisting the services of multiple carriers to ensure network reliability and custom solutions across a vast, diverse infrastructure tend to get the best return on their investment when they adopt managed connectivity solutions. 

MSPs offer scalable and customizable service options tailored to the client’s organizational structure and needs. Without that flexibility, companies investing in managed connectivity could end up paying for service levels that aren’t needed in every location.

That’s why MSPs that prioritize providing exceptional value give end-users the option of selecting from several scalable service levels for hardware health assessments, event notifications, and security monitoring. 

When organizations expand into remote locations and have the option of investing in white-glove service remediation and on-site field services, for example, there’s no need to assign labor-intensive issues to on-premises IT teams or hire local technicians to resolve connectivity issues.  

Timely Integration with Emerging Technologies

Business owners who prioritize keeping pace with their competition are under considerable pressure to also keep up with emerging technologies. Today, the collective spotlight is focused on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The interplay of AI with the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing, for example, shows considerable potential for revolutionizing network management and enhancing system security.

As software-defined networking gains traction, analysts predict AI functionality will be integrated into multiple infrastructure components, including firewalls and routers. Organizations partnering with MSPs specializing in business connectivity have the advantage of business networks supported by industry professionals who have their fingers directly on the pulse of emerging technologies and are leading the charge.

Bandwidth Optimization Technology

The tech supporting today’s work-from-anywhere business landscape requires decision-makers and their administrators to authorize remote access to their company’s private network through multiple access points. As the bandwidth needed to transmit data increases, users on their business network could experience reduced call quality, slow data transmissions, or distortions.

Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) technology helps ensure every connection is fast, secure, and reliable. It analyzes circuit performance and prioritizes incoming and outbound transmissions according to their service level agreements (SLAs), QoS settings, and priority policies. 

Managed connectivity solutions supported by SD-WAN ensure optimal broadband performance across all applications and devices, the option of enhanced firewall functions, and access to the latest encryption technologies. If latency is detected on one circuit, time-sensitive transmissions are routed to another.

Could Managed Connectivity Solutions Unlock Your Success in the Digital Age?

Businesses have been outsourcing a wide range of resource-intensive tasks for decades. Although most decision-makers recognize the value of hiring expert third-party contractors for administrative support, call center services, and recruitment, far fewer fully understand the value of managed connectivity.

Managed service providers specializing in connectivity optimize and oversee their client’s network connections to ensure essential stability and security. They can provide any hardware or software you need for reliable performance. Whether you’re running a business with several locations in the same state or several hundred office buildings across the globe, you’ll have a single point of contact for all your carrier contracts, monitored devices, and invoices.

Contact BCM One to learn more about managed connectivity and effective technology expense management. We can draw a straight line between the challenges impacting your business and the services we provide.