Manage This: What Is the Difference Between Outsourcing and Managed Services?

Ambika Taylor February 26, 2021 Business Comments Off on Manage This: What Is the Difference Between Outsourcing and Managed Services? 423 Views

Looking to take some of the workloads off of your business’s shoulders?

No matter how good you and your employees are, there are certain tasks that you can’t do reliably. This may be because no one has the necessary skill set needed to do it without a hitch. It can also be because everyone already has a lot of work to do and is close to burning out.

This is why many businesses outsource certain responsibilities to other businesses. Meanwhile, others rely on managed services. What is the difference between outsourcing and managed services though, if any?

Read what’s below to find out. You’ll see how different they are and which one is the better option for you.

Understanding Outsourcing

Outsourcing has your brand contacting other services to handle certain tasks from your business. These are ones that you can do in-house, but decide to delegate to other professionals anyway.

This is so that you can help your business save on tons of costs. You can choose to outsource to other companies so you don’t have to invest in the equipment needed to do the task.

This also helps you save on rent. Large equipment may be a chore to keep in-house. Others may already have the equipment on-site, saving you the effort of getting and housing it for yourself.

In terms of payment, outsourced businesses are pretty straightforward. You ask them to perform a service for you and they do it following the parameters of your agreement. You pay them afterward following their fulfillment of the agreement.

Understanding Managed Services

Managed services are much more focused on providing you with services that your business lacks, instead of what your business doesn’t have time to perform. These are often large-scale tasks, like IT management, which is among the Bestructured.com services offered to different businesses.

How it differs from outsourcing is in their approach to doing the task delegated to them. Businesses will only perform the outsourced tasks that you ask of them. Managed services have a more holistic approach to the problem.

Let’s take IT services, once again, as an example. Managed services will adopt the entire IT infrastructure of your business and manage it as if it were their own. They’ll improve the operating speeds of the network, increasing business efficiency.

Maintenance is also included when opting for managed services. They’ll assess the network regularly to look out for any security risks that it has.

As you can see, with managed services, it’s like you’re adopting another company to take care of a certain part of your business. In outsourcing, you only maintain a relationship until both parties fulfilled their end of the agreement.

Managed services often have different payment methods too. You’ll have to pay a subscription fee to continue benefiting from their services.