Business analysts, research firms, and educators correlate innovation with business growth. They suggest ways to create an innovative culture and cite examples of companies that failed to innovate, such as Blockbuster, Kodak, and Borders. Yet, how innovation happens is what companies must explore.
Innovation is a creative process that requires preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Innovative minds need time to consider concepts that produce the "aha" moment when new ideas take form. Companies that achieve innovation create a new or changed entity with value, such as streaming movies instead of playing a physical DVD.
Unfortunately, time is hard to come by in a competitive environment where consumers demand goods delivered faster and expect responses in seconds. How do businesses carve out hours for employees to explore the creative process when most companies are understaffed? What operational tasks can be ignored to provide more time?
Managed network services providers (MNSPs) can help organizations find time to innovate by overseeing the technical complexities of in-house IT. MNSPs can free up resources, reduce costs, provide business connectivity, and maintain a robust infrastructure to support future needs. Once businesses understand the scope of services an MNSP offers, they'll see how they can find time to innovate.
How Managed Network Services Help Companies Find Time to Innovate
The shortage of IT professionals continues to plague every industry. IT departments are understaffed, overworked, and burnt out. As shortages ripple through organizations, employees complain of network interruptions and increased downtime, while remote workers have trouble staying connected. Decision-makers report declining productivity and stalling innovation.
Relief is not in sight. By 2026, 90% of organizations will feel the monetary impact of the IT skills shortage, with a projected loss of $5.5 trillion because of product delays, loss of business, and impaired competitiveness. With companies struggling to survive, there's little room for innovation. Companies thriving in modern times have found the perfect solution in outsourcing IT skills to managed network services (MNS).
Provide Resources
IT-managed services offer expert resources that can augment staff shortages. These IT professionals can take responsibility for end-to-end monitoring and network management, freeing staff for collaborative innovation.
With knowledgeable professionals, managed network services provide technical expertise in network optimization, whether on-premise, in the cloud, or hybrid. Thus, IT departments don't have to allocate time and money for advanced technologies like SD-WAN, an essential tool for optimizing network performance.
Improve Connectivity
Business connectivity is at the core of an organization's infrastructure. Voice and data should deliver low latency and high transmission speeds regardless of the connection. If connections are slow, productivity declines. A recent study found that:
- 19.9% of employees experienced connectivity issues with video calls.
- 93% of respondents can't complete daily tasks without online access.
- 42.9% of workers could not complete even half a day's work without internet access.
- 15.9% of staff members had programs crashing or failing to load because of poor network performance.
Working with multiple vendors consumes technical, financial, and administrative resources. C-Suite decision-makers must confirm that technical services meet service-level agreements. Finance and legal departments end up spending hours reconciling and resolving disputes. To resolve these issues, MNS provides unified communications that integrate voice and data into a single source, consolidating providers and eliminating the monitoring of multiple contracts.
Enhance Security
Cybersecurity threatens more than just innovation. Inadequate defenses can lead to breaches and ransomware, costing companies millions. However, keeping ahead of cybercrime is a full-time job. Cybersecurity experts spend hours familiarizing themselves with the latest threats, writing protocols to protect against intrusion, and monitoring networks.
Without a managed network service, IT departments add security responsibilities to their overwhelming workload, leaving no time for innovating processes or technology to improve operations. MNS can free IT departments of comprehensive cybersecurity duties by operating end-to-end monitoring and analysis and sending alerts if a potential threat is detected.
Optimize Network Performance
Maintaining peak performance requires 24/7/365 observation. SD-WAN solutions optimize network performance; however, realizing improvements requires network engineers trained in the technology. MNS providers have SD-WAN expertise to ensure efficient operations through automated routing. With less downtime and faster operating speeds, productivity increases. Employees spend less time waiting for applications to load or calls to connect.
Minor interruptions to an employee's workflow, such as slow-loading applications, cost an average of 15 minutes. That's the length of time it takes for an employee to return to the same concentration level before an interruption. Researchers also found that a 2.8-second interruption caused workers to make twice the number of computer errors.
MNS providers can create customized solutions to ensure maximum uptime. They leverage connectivity capabilities to build a scalable infrastructure that adjusts to fluctuations in demand so voice quality and data transfer speeds don't decline.
How MNS Help Businesses Fund Innovation
Providing resources, improving security, and optimizing network performance not only frees time but also saves money—money that can be invested in building an innovative culture. MNSPs help organizations lower operating, equipment, and labor costs. With the right technical support, companies can reallocate financial resources to new initiatives.
- Reduce Expenditures. Letting an MNS company manage a network and provide security services removes the burden of paying for specialized security and monitoring solutions. It also lowers the cost of purchasing and maintaining equipment.
- Improve Operational Efficiencies. Improved network performance means fewer workflow interruptions. Less downtime and delays can increase employee productivity and boost customer satisfaction. Efficient production strengthens the bottom line, allowing businesses to worry less about survival and focus more on innovative growth.
- Minimize Indirect Costs. Costs for recruiting, hiring, training, and retaining employees are minimized. Existing IT departments have manageable workloads, so there's no need to add staff. Legal has fewer contracts to review, and accounting has fewer invoices to manage.
Enhance Your Organization's Innovation with Managed Network Services
Innovation requires employees' minds to be free of daily minutiae. It also takes resources to fund new ideas. IT-managed services can provide these crucial components of innovation success. With an MNS partner, companies can gain time and resources to grow through innovation.
BCM One is a global provider of managed network services that help businesses streamline network operations and improve performance. Contact us to learn more about how our solutions help companies to innovate.
