There are two kinds of offices in the world – frenzied, chaotic places and serene, productive work environments. One of the most important factors that determines which path an office goes down is efficiency.

Efficiency comes in many forms. An efficient office is a clean office, for example. Otherwise, employees would be unable to quickly find the tools and documents they need to complete tasks.

An efficient office is also a modern one, equipped with modern hardware and software solutions. A business can’t keep up with the demands of today’s customers using yesterday’s tools and equipment. Efficient office managers keep themselves up to date with the latest solutions on how to improve processes and procedures at their workplaces.

But what really makes an office efficient are its workflows. Efficient office workflows put employees in the best possible position for managing their daily tasks and consistently reduce waste – both in terms of time and office materials.

Managed services are key to unlocking the potential of office employees, resources, and processes. Incorporating managed solutions into workplace represents a major step towards improving workflow efficiency.

Can Managed IT Solutions Improve Office Workflows?

Many office managers are skeptical about managed IT services, and for good reason. A major part of the commercial tech sector seems committed to the idea that its processes, its equipment, and its tasks are wholly and entirely unique, and that nobody can possibly perform them better than the in-house team does.

But when it comes to managed print solutions and managed IT services, this is rarely the case. Every company and a particular city is using the same municipal infrastructure to perform work. Companies that share office space use the same electricity to power different lightbulbs – is their network infrastructure that different?

Moreover, every organization still has to meet industry-wide standards, guidelines, and regulations. Everyone follows the same tax laws, meets the same SEC guidelines, and reports their earnings to the same IRS.

And while everyone prints on the same kind of paper, some pay less and earn more out of their printing processes than others. Everyone uses the same Internet, but some organizations use network infrastructure more efficiently.

Managed services allow offices to streamline workflow tasks and prioritize the in-house IT team’s agenda so that they don’t get bogged down dealing with low-impact tasks. These services are key to making the most of tech-centric processes, and the way they do it is by leveraging opportunity cost.

Managed IT Solutions Reduce Opportunity Costs

Whether an organization is a home-office business or a Fortune 100 enterprise, every process it completes requires two things: personnel and equipment. A company’s employees have to complete tasks in order to generate value for customers – that’s just how it works.

This is easy to understand when it comes to manufacturing products or providing customer-oriented services, but it gets hazier when it comes to an in-house IT team. How much value does an IT specialist generate for customers if they spend all day fixing broken printers?

The answer: Not as much value as an IT specialist really should be generating. Every hour spent fixing a broken printer or diagnosing a network problem that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place is an hour not spent building a new customer-facing application, or developing an API that improves the customer experience.

This is where managed services offer the most important boost to office workflow efficiency. They allow organizations to dedicate their in-house time and resources to the highest-impact, most strategically valuable initiatives while delegating managed service vendors to complete low-impact tasks that are nonetheless strategically necessary.

The more time an IT team spends automating existing processes and analyzing data to gain valuable insight, the more value the company can generate overall. At the same time, it can delegate managed service vendors like XMC to handle the business-critical elements of print and network infrastructure without having to dedicate an inordinate amount of time or money to maintaining that infrastructure.

Office Workflows are Evolving – And So Are Users’ Needs

Much in the same way cloud storage solutions help businesses gain access to secure, mobile-ready document management, managed print solutions can help them deploy and implement world-class connectivity technology like Xerox ConnectKey at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to implement a similar solution on-premises.

By delegating urgent, low-impact technological needs to a managed service vendor, office managers can radically change the way office workflows generate value for customers. XMC equipment and expertise is key to making that happen using the latest technology on the market.

Speak with a managed solutions expert today and discover how managed IT and print services can transform any business. The team at XMC is ready to help improve any and all printing processes in place.