Small and mid-market-sized businesses with warehouse and logistics departments face a myriad of unique challenges when implementing new processes and related technologies to keep up with growth. One of them is finding ongoing support for current and future supply chain modernization projects. After all, as time passes, a successful company that continues to see high volumes of customer demand will eventually outstrip its abilities and resources to manage business swells, and the likely route is making the investments required to keep up. Not doing so will lead to downtimes and bottlenecks in production.
Although next-generation technologies tend to accelerate workflows and preserve data accuracy, the combination of a poor system integration effort and lack of a dedicated support unit will hinder any hopes of meeting ROI projections.
It’s for these reasons and more, that small and growing businesses are encouraged to proactively include technology support within their strategic improvement plans to mitigate future disruptions. This may seem like a daunting task though, if the organization has few IT resources to lean on. Further, recruiting IT talent is still a challenge for companies of all sizes, especially if payroll budgets can’t support taking that action.
By hiring a 3rd party, namely one that operates as a support-as-a-service team, SMBs can find IT help at a lower cost than adding headcount and can expand their technology stack without worry. Because it is impossible to always predict what sorts of changes will impact the supply chain, solution providers recommend looking for services that provide:
- Partnerships with leading technology manufacturers – The costs to improve supply chain management systems can be minimal, to quite large, dependent on the goals in mind. However, a close partnership with a value-added reseller (VAR) that also has strong ties with the original manufacturer (OEM) of the products an end-user is considering, can provide a ton of value to the purchaser. From a price perspective, customers may receive lower rates versus working with other VARs, especially when compared to MSRP. In terms of support services, that same VAR, if used for installation and configuration services, will be well-equipped to handle any services post-deployment, given their familiarity with what was installed and their long-standing experience in the OEM’s product line, which will help “get things corrected” fast.
- Post-deployment onboarding – An hour of downtime can cost SMBs thousands of dollars in missed opportunities and sales. Recent studies estimate 88% of data breaches are caused by user mistakes, which means proper post-deployment support is essential for overall solution longevity. From strategic consultation to integrity testing, SMBs should expect close post-deployment support, in the way of a detailed onboarding process, curated by their solution provider to reduce downtime costs. For small businesses that may be new to mobile workforce solutions in general, who might also field smaller IT teams, partnering with a services provider well-versed in similar new integrations and scenarios related to troubleshooting them, will work like a mentorship.
- Adaptable maintenance plans and MDM – As software and applications mature, there may be a need for system updates. Ongoing monitoring of available updates and patches can help your team ensure all systems are supported and vulnerability gaps closed. Moreover, as your business grows, consider implementing a mobile device management plan to expand visibility into device health. Assisted remote managed monitoring ultimately reduces operational costs as technologies are then tracked for when the time is right to be proactively serviced before issues disrupt productivity. All-in-all, a managed services provider can monitor, manage, and maintain rugged devices, wireless networks, label printers, and more, in real-time, allowing IT teams to focus on big-picture action items.
Assisted decommissioning and repairs – Lastly, an support team hired as-a-service empowers you to scale support accessibility for real-time assistance. When devices are finally ready to retire or exit your workflows, systematic data destruction and backups will prevent sensitive information from leaving your workflows. Furthermore, spare pool management ensures your teams can still use their tools whenever repairs are necessary, decreasing losses associated with downtime.
An adaptable warehouse automation plan is a successful automation plan. Period.