Find an Outsourced Managed IT Provider that Knows Your Business.

While the importance and value of service should not be understated as a common theme in technology outsourcing, the quality of that service will be significantly enhanced by the service provider’s knowledge of your industry and your people. The commoditized element of technology outsourcing is largely associated with leading Cloud providers, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, and any product or service derived from their portfolio. There are, however, technology products and tools specific to industries that need to be provided on top of such general user collaboration technology.

Know Your Product.

Using the financial services industry as an example, it is important for outsourced IT providers to know about the different products used in different industries. Whether you operate on the buy/sell side and actively operate within the markets, or whether you’re a private equity firm working on deals and acquisition opportunities at any time of day and in any location, there are lots of different requirements that your managed IT provider needs to be aware of to continue to add value to their services. Portfolio and order management systems are widely used by firms and managers to track their positions. Many of these systems have inter-application dependencies on applications like Excel, and many of them have 3rd party data requirements in order to populate spreadsheets and models with live data.

Knowing the ins and outs of an industry’s primary product is key for a managed IT provider to offer high-quality support to customers. Whilemany of the products used in the financial industry are often SaaS-derived, some of them still run on-premise. Depending on the execution strategy, the requirement on speed and performance might be absolute, and so along with product information, come back-end infrastructure requirements. IT providers may need to run such applications in a private Cloud, requiring additional expertise, such as database administrators (DBAs), server and infrastructure professionals, and market data professionals, who are used to handling and provisioning market data and market identifiers along with all associated dependencies. While many of these skills are niche, they might not be commonly known throughout 1st and 2nd line support teams, and so, with time to market of paramount importance to such customers, it is imperative that issues associated with financial services products find their way to the relevant support professional in a timely manner.

Know Your Audience.

Knowing the individuals on the other end of the telephone in addition to the restraints and or obligations they are placed under, is also a key requirement when adding value to the financial services industry as an outsourced managed IT provider. Customers might be working in financial markets and therefore, understanding the instruments and markets they work in are important when offering support. If a deal maker is in a different country and happens to call into a help desk at 01:00 in the morning regional time, they want the same level of service as if it is the middle of the day. Anything less might impact the very deal they are about to close.

As a global financial technology service provider, Thrive has deep knowledge of all financial regulators such as the FCA, SEC, MAS, HKMA, and so on. Thrive also understands the governing body and regulator requirements as they relate to risk and security, not to mention the more general regional requirements as they relate to National Security and the European Union. For example, the SEC has been leading the way with regard to cybersecurity obligations for some time. The requirements the SEC imposes as a result of its cybersecurity risk management for investment advisors, registered investment companies, and business development companies, may differ widely from the same or similar FCA requirement. Beyond the requirements of financial regulators and governing bodies, additional regulations such as DORA, MIFID II, and GDPR, are also enforced by regional jurisdiction authorities such as the European Union, and so service isn’t a binary function between an end user and a help desk operative. It extends to the broader relationship where managed IT service providers utilize expert account managers with specific industry knowledge to advise their customer points of contact and decision makers in the non-technology aspects of their technology function as it relates to governance and control.

Know Thrive.

Working with an outsourced managed IT service provider who knows how your business operates and understands how your employees work and when they work is crucial to a successful partnership. With Thrive, your organization will be taken care of. Thrive’s experts can address any business concerns and are available to your team 24×7. Contact Thrive today to learn more about how we can work with you to help you achieve your business goals, no matter the industry.