Compliance with regulatory requirements is critical in highly regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and insurance. Failure to comply can result in fines, legal action, and damage to a business’s reputation. This applies to all content applications such as websites and mobile applications, as well as the digital infrastructure that supports these experiences.
Managed IT services can help these industries with solutions to counteract cybersecurity threats, compliance risks, or a lack of resources. Even businesses already leveraging managed services may face challenges such as a lack of transparency, poor communication, and a lack of customized solutions that meet their specific needs.
This also allows businesses to ensure compliance while minimizing risk. In this article, we’ll explain more about the benefits of managed IT services and why highly regulated companies should prioritize them.
Why Managed IT Services are Growing in Importance for Regulated Businesses
In the current climate, businesses are under increasing pressure to operate efficiently and maximize available resources. However, that need to operate efficiently doesn’t mean that spending will grind to a halt.
In fact, enterprises will increase spending on software and IT services such as managed IT services, as Gartner forecasts that IT services spending will reach $1.3 trillion in 2023, a 5.5% increase. There are several forces, both internal and external, driving businesses to incorporate outside help for implementation and support. They include:
Digital Transformation
Organizations in regulated industries have long relied on legacy infrastructure to power their technology stacks. However, many are undergoing or planning to undergo a digital transformation as the need to keep up with innovation and changing technology advancements continues.
Remote Work and Labor Shortages
Regulated enterprises are also suffering from talent and labor shortages. Adjustments to working environments due to the explosion of remote work and a scarcity of people with deep technical expertise mean that businesses need to turn to other sources to help bridge the gap.
Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
Regarding digital infrastructure, businesses in regulated industries need to remain compliant. For example, healthcare institutions must comply with HIPAA regulations to maintain patient privacy. Similarly, financial institutions must comply with Anti Money Laundering (AML) and Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations when interacting with customers.
Market Volatility
Enterprises are still operating in a market rife with volatility. This means that despite an increase in IT spending, decision-making will still be affected by factors such as consumer spending, talent availability, and more.
Cybersecurity Requirements
As numerous enterprises ramp up their digital solutions, there has also been an increase in data breaches. Businesses, therefore, require more robust threat detection and prevention systems to cope with these potential vulnerabilities.
The Benefits of Managed IT Services
Opting for a managed IT services provider can help businesses realize a number of benefits:
Access to Expert Guidance
Managed service providers offer businesses expert guidance to help them solve complex challenges. Rather than worry about talent shortages, they can feel secure that the third-party provider has the requisite experience and knowledge to assist them.
Reduced Compliance Costs
Failure to comply with strict regulatory requirements can result in heavy fines and reputational damage for healthcare, insurance, and finance organizations in particular. However, with managed services support, these businesses can leverage round-the-clock monitoring and proactive maintenance to ensure everything is in order. This can help regulated businesses avoid downtime, respond faster to incidents, and detect potential cybersecurity threats beforehand.
Improved Operational Efficiency
Managed services enable businesses to improve operational efficiency by providing access to modern technology that helps streamline workflows and reduce costs.
Increased Capacity & Agility
Enterprises can scale their IT infrastructure more easily without making large additional investments every time. As a result, they can be more agile, responding faster to changes in the market and capitalizing on opportunities.
Better Strategic Leverage
With third-party support in play, regulated businesses are given more strategic leverage, allowing them to allocate resources accordingly and focus on other value-focused aspects of the company instead.
Enhanced Productivity
Increased support from a team of experts enables organizations to increase internal productivity as they can reduce the risk of downtime and rely on a team in place to handle IT-related disruptions that might have previously interrupted workflows.
How Content Bloom Supports Your Enterprises Digital Infrastructure Needs
Building and maintaining enterprise-grade infrastructure while accessing the resources required to exploit opportunities and address unexpected challenges can be an unnecessary burden for businesses.
Content Bloom provides managed IT services that is a complete offering for businesses to take advantage of. We handle your digital requirements, including technical consulting, maintenance, support, content management, always-on DevOps support, and managed cloud hosting services.
With a dedicated team of cross-functional experts available 24/7, 365 days per year, you can focus on revenue-driving activities that positively impact your business and its customers while maintaining compliance and risk requirements. Plus our knowledge of industry-leading CMS solutions can help ensure that you have the right technology in place to achieve business targets and remain competitive.
Supporting a Multinational Financial Institution
A North American bank with over $1.4 trillion in assets and $41 billion in annual revenue required round-the-clock support to ensure compliance and security turned to Content Bloom for assistance. Our in-depth industry knowledge and digital proficiency provided them with a custom-tailored managed services solution to handle their CMS and application infrastructure.
Content Bloom was available to resolve various challenges, from web content issues to hiccups in the publishing process and server spikes. As a result, they now enjoy improved SLA Compliance, an average ticket acknowledgment time of under 2 minutes, and a resolution time of fewer than 6 hours.
Learn more about how Content Bloom assisted them and the extent of our managed IT services in our case study: SLA Compliance with Managed IT Services.
FAQ
What are managed IT services?
Managed services refer to outsourcing IT tasks to a third-party service provider who takes on business operations and processes to increase operational efficiency and reduce costs.
Who needs managed IT services?
Companies with expensive processes and infrastructure that are hard to maintain and don’t offer a competitive differentiator can benefit the most from managed services. This is especially true for enterprises in highly regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and insurance.
Where are managed IT services being deployed currently?
Organizations are deploying managed services to manage IT infrastructure, deploy cloud services, improve cybersecurity and mitigate risk, manage data, and provide customer support.
