Why do it yourself when you can hire a professional?

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February 14, 2023By Joe Sande

If an enterprise application is the heart of operations, you're not going to trust its nurturing to just anyone

Joe Sande

By Joe Sande, SVP Global, Customer Care

You seek a professional when you're sick, need maintenance on your car, or experience flickering lights in your home. Most of us don't trust ourselves to self-diagnose, self-prescribe, or troubleshoot a perceived problem outside our natural abilities expecting an optimal outcome. More company leaders than ever are thinking about cloud management and optimization the same way they feel about their doctors, mechanics, and electricians. Why would they risk their business' success by skimping on the expertise and skills needed to maintain tech environments critical to their business? If an enterprise application is the heart of operations, the logic is that you're not going to trust its nurturing to just anyone.

Your unique solution is your differentiator

It seemed like yesterday when the big question for many companies was, 'Should we move to cloud or not?' Then it evolved into 'Should we go public or private?' Now we're living in a hybrid, multi-cloud world where the million-dollar question is not when or how, but 'I'm here; how do I take advantage of everything my solution has to offer?'

A few ERP cloud companies, like Infor, provide out-of-the-box functionality, enabling a quicker implementation and go-live experience. Even then, every customer's configuration is unique to their business and requires a certain level of ongoing expertise and support. It's often an eye-opener when customers realize they underestimated the effort, time, and skill it will take to extract or extend the functionality from their applications to meet their unique business requirements and deliver on expectations from company stakeholders.

Resource gaps limit your success

The scarcity and price tag of recruiting and hiring resources for companies that desire to build a center of excellence to support their cloud solutions are becoming a bitter pill to swallow. Cloud platform and technology expertise are two of the most sought skills—imperative for successfully operating and extending business applications to evolve as needs change. Why are these resources so tricky to find and so expensive to retain?  

Many companies, regardless of industry, are experiencing the impact of three labor challenges preventing their ability to build the needed capacity in internal IT teams:  

1. The cost of wages and inflation continues to rise, making it challenging to hire positions budgeted the year prior—now significantly more expensive.  
2. A younger, more confident workforce changes jobs every few years—inhibiting the ability to build up and retain resource capacity.
3. An aging workforce, either retiring or changing career paths, takes tribal application knowledge with them when they go—leaving essential roles unstaffed and impossible to replace.

What choice do companies have if it's too costly and difficult to hire and keep needed resources? Is there a way around the expense and hassle of maintaining an internal team to optimize your cloud solution?  

Demystify the gap and find your herd of unicorns

It may surprise you that the answer to addressing skills and resource capacity woes is a simple solution—managed services. Managed services aren't just for on-premises deployments. Its value increases significantly for hybrid and multi-cloud solutions where varying levels of expertise are needed throughout the lifespan of an enterprise application.

Many cloud ERP providers, like Infor, have their own managed services organizations. No one is better suited to operate and run those environments than those who built the applications and continue investing in them. On any given day, Infor's Managed Services team helps customers:

• Support business users with 'how to' and 'why' questions imperative to perform their job functions
• Assist with the creation and management of new enhancements and extensions
• Ensure extensions and integrations continue to operate seamlessly with every cloud update
• Monitor critical integrations, interfaces, workflows, and business processes around the clock for uninterrupted business continuity

Plus, every Infor Managed Services solution includes a designated main point of contact familiar with a customer's specific solution and focused on their long-term success. They'll always have an accountable Infor leader whom they can turn to when they need assistance.

Infor's depth and breadth of available expertise make our customers feel like they have an entire army of skilled professionals ready to address the expected and unexpected—never going on vacation, always available and willing to assist. And all of this comes at a predictable, agreed-to cost that remains static over the life of the contract, regardless of inflation and economic changes.

Stay competitive and within budget—hire the professionals

Companies move to the cloud to take advantage of a scalable and agile model to reduce costs and increase efficiency. That same expectation carries through once their deployment is in production. With the right resources and expertise, organizations can quickly and efficiently address new and changing requirements—delivering a competitive edge to their business.

If global economic uncertainty and workforce quandaries have stifled innovation, leaving your most valuable resources overextended, why not consider managed services? Infor Managed Services can free your internal teams to focus on strategic priorities while helping extract maximum value from your Infor application and evolve it as your business grows.

 

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