The ups and downs of Managed IT – The 4 ways SMEs are responding to the economy with flexible solutions

Cash is King – OpEx vs. CapEx. Companies are taking on more agency or contracted staff, but the commitment to fulfil resourcing needs is a financial burden that many companies don’t want to take on. To resolve the problem they need a flexible IT on-demand model to match. Smart companies want to invest in appreciating assets and rent depreciating assets, managed IT provides the ideal solution for freeing up cash-flow.

Iconnyx has analysed its customers’ IT support requirements and has identified 4 ways that managed IT enables companies to respond to economic peaks and troughs.

1/ Responding to the economic climate
Company A is an example of a company that has needed to decrease and then increase user numbers to reflect the changing economic climate. It had 40 Hosted Exchange users which were reduced, using the Iconnyx model, when the company needed to downsize in response to the economic climate. Now using the same model it is back up to 36 users and growing steadily.

2/ Supporting project-based work
Company B is a project related company with 12-20 core staff which could regularly rise to 50-60 when outside consultants came onboard to work on projects. The Iconnyx model allowed it to increase and decrease users, giving it the flexibility needed to run its business. Company B was looking at a £55/month per user service charge for the most current versions of Office and anti virus protection, compared to initial outlay and set up charges of closer to £1000+ per user.

3/ Responding to a sudden loss of revenue
Company C has an annual turnover of £4m, when it lost a £2m contract overnight it needed to reduce costs immediately. One of the reasons it didn’t go bust was that it had a managed IT solution which allowed it to reduce the amount of users in line with the staff reductions and they weren’t tied contractually to costly hardware and software.

4/ Allowing for expansion into new geographies
Company D has 220 hosted exchange users worldwide, which includes Greenland, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone and Colombia. When it opens a mine or project in a new geography a hosted exchange is installed. This provides a standardised email structure aiding communications across different countries and continents. IT has enabled the organisation to grow in remote mining locations and provide a global email infrastructure meaning that when it comes to IT, no-one is left feeling like the poor relation.

Tim Walker, Iconnyx Managing Director explains:
“Our customers want the security of knowing they can respond quickly in a dynamic environment, providing them the opportunity to growing quickly when there is the opportunity to do so without the fear or restriction of a costly IT overhead.

“The uptake of could-based technologies has been aided by the recession and organisation’s need for flexible, cost efficient IT solutions. We look at many things as an indication of the market and often find that the number of Managed IT user subscriptions we have, is a good barometer of the economy.”

Iconnyx’s flexible model allows its Managed IT users to increase and decrease the number of user subscriptions and software requirements on a monthly basis. This allows companies to match IT solutions to resource levels and project requirements, aiding cash flow.