Learn More About HSO's Application Management and Managed Services
Leveraging Managed Services for Application Management Lifecycle
28 May, 2021
Companies depend on their business-critical applications for their success. More and more the integration of ERP, CRM, and HCM systems, both cloud and on-premises, along with supporting tools and connectors, are overwhelming IT departments. Keeping current on the rapidly evolving technologies and applications is hard enough but finding knowledgeable and skilled talent to support them makes things even harder. That’s why companies are looking to Managed Services Providers (MSP) for help with their Dynamics Application Management Lifecycle.
What is a Managed Services Provider?
First, a few definitions:
Application Management Lifecycle refers to managing an application’s operation, maintenance, upgrades, and system performance throughout an application’s lifecycle within an organization.Microsoft Dynamics Application Management with HSO
Managed Services refers to outsourcing some or all of a company’s IT responsibilities to a trusted third party (a Managed Services Provider or MSP) for application management and other IT services..
Competency Center (or Center for Excellence) is a group of dedicated IT consulting resources with functional and technical skills. The Competency Center is responsible for the Application Management activity which consists of reactive support and proactive services.
Reactive Support is when a user comes across an issue in their normal day-to-day operations and needs help getting past the issue or error. The end-user would submit a support ticket requesting assistance.
Proactive Support is when the IT resources or the Competency Center Team schedules a service event to prevent or to get ahead of potential issues. This might include database tuning and performance monitoring. It can also include training and pre-scheduling of environment management activity like code promotions or data refreshing of non-production environments.
A Service Level Agreement (or SLA) refers to a formal agreement between a service provider and the client where the service provider guarantees their service performance to the client. Examples include quality, availability, response time, uptime, number of outages, etc.
When companies install complex business applications, they rely on experts who understand the system, the hosting environment, and the fine points for optimizing the system performance to get the most from their software investment. Integrations among best-of-breed applications – ERP, CRM, and HCM systems – can create tremendous pressure on internal IT staff to remain current on each application and optimize the environment to take advantage of each application’s contribution. They can become so bogged down with maintaining the systems that they are missing valuable opportunities to take advantages of new features, technologies, and optimizations.
Managed Services providers can offer relief and expert guidance in these and other areas, freeing the internal IT staff to focus on what really matters to the company: using these applications to help the company gain new customers and grow.
MSPs can help businesses with application management of their business systems (upgrades, migrations, optimizations, help desk support, etc.).
Benefits of Managed Services offering Application Management Lifecycle
- Take advantage of experts who are specifically trained in your business application and can watch for opportunities and best practices, helping your company be more proactive in leveraging the capabilities of your application.
- Standardize your IT spend to a manageable monthly fee. Most MSPs charge only for the services you need with multiple service levels.
- Rather than keep up to date on technology or have to hire to that skill set, managed service allows you to outsource not only the maintenance and upkeep, but also the talent search for these skillsets.
- Managed services providers can typically manage applications at a lower cost than requiring your IT team to cover it.
- Most MSPs are more capable at maintaining service levels, security, and system performance and monitoring.
- MSP resources perform the “Once in a while” tasks on a more frequent basis with the pool of customers, that they know the pitfalls and risks that may come up during these rare activities.
- Managed Service Providers have technical, functional and solution architects on staff to be able to navigate the full breadth and depth of an application.
Using HSO for Microsoft Dynamics Application Management
For over 25 years, HSO has demonstrated expertise in offering managed services for Microsoft Dynamics applications to our customers. We understand the Dynamics product line and taking advantage of the capabilities and features of the Microsoft Azure environment and the Power Platform. Working with HSO can put you on the fast track to digital transformation.
HSO offers several levels of support and we work closely with our clients to ensure you get the support you need from our team of Dynamics experts.
- Clients can choose to let HSO manage some or all the responsibility for your Microsoft Dynamics and Dynamics 365 products so you can focus on making your business more successful
- Clients with an experienced staff can use HSO for occasional help on advanced issues or emergency assistance. Our Standard and Advanced SLAs let clients retain more (Standard) or less (Advanced) of the responsibility for maintaining control of their Microsoft Dynamics and Dynamics 365 applications.