5 Reasons to Pick an IT AMC Service for Your Business

The last, and perhaps the only, piece of technology humanity has perfected in the last 100 years is the ballpoint pen. Everything else, from your phone to your air conditioner, needs to be maintained and upgraded. With how complex our IT systems have become, especially in the business world, keeping track of all your IT assets and making sure they’re performing at maximum capacity is nearly impossible. 

That’s why IT service providers came up with IT annual maintenance contracts. Much like other BPO services you can lean on, IT AMCs take the burden of tech maintenance off your hands. While ease and peace of mind are good enough reasons for any service, IT AMC services have a variety of benefits. 

Understanding IT AMC

Before we start weighing the pros and cons, it’s important for us to understand what an IT maintenance contract. Simply put, it’s a comprehensive agreement between the IT service provider and your business outlining all the maintenance services they’ll provide in a calendar year, the scope of work, and the associated costs. While exact services can vary between companies and industries, the general services include: 

• Preventive maintenance: Regular checkups and reviews of all your hardware and software IT assets to identify areas for improvement and necessary upgrades ahead of time. 
• Remote support: You can avoid a costly in-house IT maintenance department with access to technical support via phone, email, or remote access.
• On-site support: For problems that demand a more personal touch, most IT AMC service providers will have on-site professionals. 
• Hardware and software updates: Applications, software, networks, and servers are constantly being upgraded for maximum performance.
• Security services: IT AMC service providers also help boost your cybersecurity. 

Cost Savings

In business, the bottom line takes precedence over most functions. IT assets are expensive, and any help you can get bringing down installation and maintenance costs is welcome. With IT AMC service providers, you can expect: 

Predictable Costs: AMCs generally operate on a fixed monthly fee, eliminating the uncertainty of unexpected repair costs. Think of it like insurance for your IT assets. Not only does it protect your budget from landslide maintenance costs, it lets you create a more accurate annual budget. 

Preventative Maintenance: Replacing technology assets can be insanely expensive. It’s not just about the cost of the machinery, but the opportunity cost of operational downtime. Regular maintenance extends the life of your assets and protects you from unexpected breakdowns. 

Bulk Discounts: Businesses love economies of scale, even when it comes to maintenance. An annual contract for bulk services gives you a chance to negotiate better rates than individual maintenance projects. 

Improved Efficiency

There’s more than one way to improve your budget performance. Most people stop at increasing revenue and decreasing costs but ignore the third pillar of cost reduction: efficiency. Streamlining your operations helps you shave costs and save time in places you never could have imagined, and IT AMCs are one of the best ways to boost organizational efficiency. 

Proactive Maintenance: As we mentioned above, AMCs are maintenance contracts at their core, and preventing asset breakdown is their core function. By organizing your maintenance projects for the entire year, you can place around maintenance downtime and avoid costly interruptions in operations. 

Expert Support: There’s nothing stopping you from setting up your own IT maintenance department, especially if your company is large enough to afford it. However, it’s still likely your department won’t even come close to the efficiency and expertise a dedicated IT AMC service provider can achieve. They have experts for any problem you may encounter, ensuring consistent and competent support. This leaves you free to focus on your core processes. 

Standardized Processes: When your entire business is focused on finding the best way to organize maintenance, you can come up with standard operations procedures that simplify the entire process. Having a set framework helps avoid errors and reduces the risk of prolonged downtime. 

Enhanced Security

There’s an understandable security concern associated with outsourcing any of your business processes, especially your IT assets. You can rest assured knowing IT AMC service providers are heavily regulated and bound by severe non-disclosure agreements that protect you from any malpractice. Additionally, they have an entire department dedicated to boosting your organization's security. 

Proactive Security Measures: While there are frameworks in place to protect you from any security emergencies, your primary coat of armor is regular maintenance and upgrades of your security protocols. This can include organization-wide security assessments, vulnerability scanning, patch management, access control management, and much more. 

Regular Updates: Hackers work day and night trying to find new ways to circumvent your security infrastructure, so it’s only fair for you to put the same amount of effort into protecting yourself. IT AMCs keep your security systems and firewalls up to date with the latest industry standard and the best security patches, which is an essential step to proactive security. 

Incident Response: No firewall is impenetrable, and there’s no such thing as 100% secure. Breaches are bound to happen, and you need to be prepared. Thankfully, incident response is a core feature of a good maintenance contract. These departments have pre-designed frameworks for different kinds of breaches and quickly respond. 

Scalability and flexibility

We already talked about how setting up an in-house IT maintenance department can be very expensive, but that doesn’t even take into account the fluid nature of modern businesses. You need to be able to upscale or downscale your operations to maximize efficiency at a moment’s notice. 

Imagine setting up a comprehensive maintenance department only for requirements to drop. Not only will your installation cost go to waste, you’ll have a fixed monthly cost going down the drain. IT AMc service providers protect you from these excess costs with: 

Customized Services: All annual maintenance contracts are tailored to your organization's size and your specific needs the moment you hire the service provider. The nature of their business lets them set up departments of any size with minimal additional cost. 

Scalability: If you’re forced to drop clients due to some new regulations or you need to upscale to accommodate new business, AMC providers can adjust their services to accommodate any changes in your strategy. This helps you maintain consistency in your IT department as your business grows and evolves. 

Flexibility: While it’s still a ‘contract’, IT AMCs are often super flexible. Contract terms are easily adjustable, and there are multiple service levels you can choose between, or change to, according to your business needs. 

Peace of Mind

All entrepreneurs and businessmen know the value of reliable, secure, and competent service providers. We mentioned peace of mind above, but we feel it deserves a section of its own simply because of how far it can push your core business. 

Guaranteed Support: With a reliable IT AMC service provider, you won’t be scrambling for a fix every time something goes wrong. Your general anxiety goes down because you know your assets are up to date, and even if something goes wrong, you know you have a set of professionals on their way to fix it. 

Risk Mitigation: There’s a lot of risk in developing IT assets, and outsourcing their maintenance offers valuable protections from the risks associated with IT infrastructure management. 

Focus on Core Business: The more time you spend worrying about your outdated IT assets and scrambling for quick fixes, the less time you have to actually grow your business. Outsourcing such a time- and energy-consuming department increases your productivity and pushes you towards your strategic goals. 

IT annual maintenance contracts should be your top priority if you’re considering outsourcing some of your business processes. It may not be as glamorous as outsourcing customer engagement or using staff augmentation services to broaden your workforce. However, chances are that it saves you the most time, money, and resources.