Application Managed Services: The Key to Avoiding Technical Debt

Of all the kinds of debt your business can fall into, the worst may be the ones that sneak up on you. And technical debt is a prime example of that.

The idea of technical debt is fairly straightforward: the longer you put off updating your systems and software, the more expensive it’s going to be in the long run.

But the impact of technical debt goes way beyond your balance sheet. It also costs you in terms of diminished productivity, reduced efficiency, and lower morale among team members. Technical debt can even lower your customers’ confidence in your ability to serve them well — especially if it translates into poor customer service experiences.

And that’s before getting into the opportunity costs you incur by not having access to the up-to-date tools and functionality that can give you significant competitive advantages over your competition, or help you win new kinds of business.

Fortunately, there’s a cure for this particular problem: Application Managed Services (AMS). Done right, AMS can take the pain out of staying up to date and provide you with the continuous resources you need to keep your business at the leading edge of technology. AMS can help you stay ahead of the competition by putting the newest and most advanced tech capabilities at your fingertips, along with the confidence and understanding you need to deploy them successfully.

What Is AMS — And How Does It Pay Off For Your Business?

You don’t have to lean on your in-house IT team to monitor, maintain, and manage your systems — and they shouldn’t have to deal with troubleshooting disruptions, security breaches, and other crises on their own. Instead, you can partner with an experienced AMS provider that has expertise in everything from setup to maintenance and security.

This arrangement saves a lot of a headaches while providing peace of mind — and best of all, it frees up your in-house team to focus on higher-level tasks, like innovating and pursuing new business opportunities.

In essence, a good AMS provider does the homework, the legwork, and the gruntwork for you.

Another valuable and potentially transformative benefit of AMS is that it gets you away from the dysfunctional and limiting break/fix model. The problem with waiting for something to break is that by the time you realize you need help, the problem is often serious enough that it’ll cost more to solve than if you’d had continuous expert support.

Columbus’s Application Managed Services are designed to liberate you from the break/fix cycle and keep your systems healthy and humming for the long haul.

A good AMS partner will:

• Be the single source of contact for issues and service requests
• Drive application uptime through proactive monitoring and reporting
• Provide 24/7 global support with guaranteed SLAs
• Have a dedicated team of industry, technical, and functional consultants providing augmented staff support and ongoing post-launch support
• Offer flexible plans that are right-sized for your organization
• Provide multiple coverage options that can be combined and customized depending on business needs.

What Sets Columbus AMS Apart from the Rest

Columbus’s AMS offerings have a number of features, benefits, and credentials that set us apart from even the most experienced AMS providers:

• Unmatched expertise earned from working with 500+ clients in 45 countries, with more than 9,000 successful implementations, over more than three decades
• Access to a worldwide team of 800 veteran experts, with boots on the ground in your geographical area and time zone
• A 98.4% compliance rate for meeting our Service Level Agreement obligations in the US
• A flexible agreement that allows you to use your retainer for any professional service that we offer, so your service hours can go where they’re most needed
• The ability to roll your hours over from month to month within any given quarter
• At the end of each quarter, the option to “true up” or “true down” for future quarters
• No overages for the first quarter of a new agreement

Boosting Your Security Measures

One major benefit of AMS is the way it elevates your security defenses beyond what’s included with your system.

Some customers think they’ll be fine with that built-in service, only to find out the hard way that in this age of increasingly sophisticated attacks and potentially devastating ransomware, you need dedicated support in your corner.

With Columbus AMS, you get a team of experts who have seen and dealt with every problem imaginable, and who understand how to help you configure your systems proactively and protectively — in addition to being on call 24/7 to help you deal with any issues that arise.

Building Better Infrastructure

Another way you can put your Columbus AMS agreement to work is by building out the data infrastructure you need, when you need it.

It’s not just that we can assist you with all of the mission-specific customizations and extensions you need, helping you identify, plan, and strategize them for maximum ROI.

It’s not just that we can help you migrate smoothly from outdated legacy systems to modern, cloud-based systems that allow you to tap into the power of machine and learning.

It’s that we can also put your data into the infrastructure setup that will allow you to harness its greatest power and potential.

For example, if you need to do advanced BI reporting or KPI monitoring, Columbus can help you not only centralize your data in the cloud, but also set up solutions like data lakes and data warehouses that are fingerprinted to your unique business needs. In fact, our data and analytics team does this work for clients around the world every day.

Want to learn more about how Columbus Managed Services can boost your business while minimizing friction and downtime? Reach out today.