Guide to Managed Intelligence
There’s a different type of services that has birthed a new category in the IT industry and it’s called Managed Intelligence. A Managed Intelligence Provider (MIP) does everything a managed IT services company does plus they have the capability to design, implement and manage AI and business process automation technologies.
Not every MSP has invested in the technical tools and training necessary to evolve into an MIP. And if you’re still working with a traditional MSP, then their capability ceiling becomes yours, because they can’t help you utilize the latest technologies that have the potential to transform your business.
In this guide, you’ll learn about managed intelligence, what MIPs do and the value they bring to companies that want to be on the leading edge of technology so they can grow and become stronger competitors.
Table of Contents
What is managed intelligence?
DEFINITION: Managed intelligence is the practice of managing a company’s technology to transform its operations, holding that technology accountable for business outcomes rather than just keeping IT systems running.
What this looks like in practice is that a managed intelligence provider (MIP) not only manages your IT systems so they’re stable and secure, but they also partner with you to leverage modern AI and process automation technologies that directly lead to better business outcomes.
Learn why managed intelligence is about capability not competence.
How can my business use AI and automation to improve our operations?
There’s a lot of talk about how AI and automation are going to replace people. But that’s not the most helpful way to think about the benefits that these technologies can bring to your organization.
Think instead about process automation as a way to improve operations by removing repetitive and manual tasks, so people can focus on higher level work. And while it’s true that one of the outcomes is that people can do more in less time, the real value comes in leaps in efficiency, more accurate reporting, and improvement in customer and employee experience.
Read how we helped a company with AI-powered invoice processing.
How can I know if my MSP can’t help with AI and business process automation?
It’s natural to look to your MSP or your internal IT team to take the lead in the adoption of new AI and automation technologies. They might be great at what they’re already doing to manage and monitor your IT systems, but when it comes to answering questions about how you can use evolving technology, they might say “we’ll get back to you on that” or they may even go completely quiet.
Silence isn’t going to help when you have valid questions that deserve answers. “What do we automate first? Who needs to be involved? How can we make sure we get the ROI we expect?”
In your quest for answers and direction, your IT team might in fact be researching the questions at the same time as you are, trying to get a handle on how best to proceed. But more information doesn’t necessarily end up in a successful AI strategy. And even if they’ve been doing great with everything else, it’s not exactly a confidence builder when your MSP is researching alongside you instead of guiding you from experience.
Experience and expertise of this sort is exactly what you get with an MIP.
Learn why you can’t Google your way through AI and automation implementation.
What’s the difference between an MSP and a Managed Intelligence Provider?
The best way to understand the difference between a managed intelligence provider and a managed services provider is in the conversations that happen during IT strategy sessions.
Both types of companies talk about IT planning and budgeting to maintain a stable and secure IT foundation. But an MIP gets to know how your business operates on a deeper level so they can help you uncover opportunities for workflow automation and assist you in utilizing AI so that it provides real value.
The insight that an MIP gains about your business comes from going deep into your operations to understand your revenue cycle, your customer commitments, and daily workflows. They’re not there to offer generic solutions but instead uncover specific ways to remove manual labor, increase accuracy and visibility, and remove bottlenecks in your operations with AI and business process automation.
Find out what MIPs do that MSPs don’t.
The Three Things an MIP Does Beyond Managing IT
There are three things an MIP does that build the foundation for success with leveraging AI and automation technologies: they gain a deep understanding of your business operations; from that they design and implement AI and automation solutions; then they manage those solutions over the long-term.
1. Understand your business
Just as your car mechanic needs to pop the hood in order to work on your car, an MIP needs to understand how your business ticks. How do you serve your customers? How do you make money? What’s seasonal or cyclical about your operations?
An MIP learns how work flows through your company — the sequence of activities that generates revenue; how work moves forward, and where it gets stuck. No two businesses are exactly alike, and these details are what set yours apart. And they’re what an MIP uses to build solutions that fit how your business operates.
2. Design and implement automation
With a clear understanding of how your business runs, an MIP analyzes your processes and works with your people to find opportunities for improvement. The first candidates for automation are often processes that are already frustrating. Others take some probing to uncover because no one has ever questioned how things are done.
Once the opportunity has been identified, an MIP chooses the technology and builds the automation inside your existing IT environment. The people who do the work provide input that shapes the automation, and sometimes the result is a better process rather than an automated version of the old one.
Learn how to find opportunities for process automation.
3. Long-term automation management
Building the automation is only the start. If no one manages an automation solution, it tends to have a short shelf life. People come and go, the business changes, and without oversight, automations can break or stop serving the business as they were intended.
An MIP manages each automation to make sure it’s up to date and operating as it’s supposed to. Every automated workflow is documented with all of its dependencies and reviewed regularly, so that as your business and IT systems change, the process still works.
Why does automation need ongoing management?
The reason why automation solutions need ongoing management is to make them sustainable over time. Automation management includes keeping a record of how each automation was built, its dependencies, and regular review to make sure it’s working properly and continues to serve the business.
There are many things that can break an automation. A security or software update could stop an automation overnight. Or the person who built a critical automation leaves and if the process breaks months later, no one has the documentation needed to fix it.
When automation runs without oversight, people stop understanding how the work flows which brings you back to the state you were in before the process was improved.
Understand why automation doesn’t manage itself.
How do I decide if I need to work with an MIP?
Now that you have a sense of what an MIP can do, it’s natural to take a step back and weigh all your options. In order to determine your path forward, you need to figure out how to best lead your AI and process automation efforts, while considering other factors like the skill of your IT team and the timeline you’ll accept for getting to success.
That brings you to four options, each suited to a different mix of in-house skill, speed, and the guidance you want behind the work, from shaping strategy to keeping IT systems solid and secure.
1. Figure it out yourself
If you’re okay with a slower experimental path, you could stay with your current MSP or internal IT and let them learn as they go. You may see some success along the way, but it’s more likely to be hit or miss. This fits when you’re in no rush, you want to keep the work in-house, and have the budget for experimentation
2. Hire an AI/Automation Consultant
If you’d rather bring in outside expertise for a specific automation project, you could hire a specialist who works only on that. You’d get the skills you need, but because IT and automation can’t be cleanly separated, accountability could get murky when something breaks. This fits when you have a defined project in mind and your IT side is already well covered.
3. Co-Managed IT plus Managed Intelligence
If you have an internal IT team you want to keep, you could bring in an MIP to work alongside them. The MIP supplements IT and cybersecurity functions and adds the capabilities you need to design, implement, and manage AI and process automation. This is a good option when your team handles the day-to-day well but doesn’t have the time or expertise to lead automation, and could use support with some areas of IT and cybersecurity.
Get details about how co-managed IT plus managed intelligence works.
4. Use an MIP as your Entire IT and AI/Automation Department
If you’d rather have one partner guide and manage it all, an MIP can serve as your entire IT, cybersecurity, and AI/Automation department. With this arrangement, you get everything a managed IT service provider brings, plus the capability to design, implement and manage AI and process automation, all from one team.
Keep reading about your options for getting AI and automation capability.
Is it better to have one provider handle both IT and automation?
There are pros and cons to each of the options listed above. But one thing tips the balance toward options three and four when you want automation that fits your systems from day one and keeps delivering, and that’s having a single provider handle both your IT and your process automations.
When one provider manages your IT and builds your automation, they understand both your systems and how your business runs. That means your automations fit both your operations and your infrastructure.
That same provider knows which automations depend on which systems, so they’re mindful of how software updates might impact connected systems. With two providers, an IT change could take down a process and you have a bigger job to get it restored.
With one team for IT, security and automation, there’s one place to call when something needs attention, and they can see the whole picture instead of just their piece of it.
Read about the benefits of having one provider handle both IT and automation.
How do you evaluate a managed intelligence provider?
Once you’ve decided that an MIP is the best route forward, evaluate companies the way you would evaluate any IT provider. Ask how long they’ve been in business, how deep their team is, how they handle cybersecurity, and what’s covered in their monthly fee. Also ask about any certifications that back up their claims such as SOC 2 Type 2 for security.
Then find out about the depth of their AI and process automation capability and experience with questions like the following.
1. Have they automated their own business?
A provider who automates their own operations knows how to do it for you. Ask what they’ve automated in their own company and what they learned. If they can’t point to anything, they’re selling something they haven’t done.
2. Do they have a dedicated automation team?
Building automation takes different skills than managing IT. Ask who designs and builds it, and whether that team is in-house or brought in from outside. You want people who know your systems, not a third party who has to start from scratch.
3. How do they manage automation over time?
For process automation to be sustainable, it needs to be monitored and managed. Ask how they document what they build and what happens when something needs to change. This is what keeps your automation working for the long term.
4. How have they helped other companies leverage AI and automation?
Ask for examples of automations they’ve built for businesses like yours. A provider with real experience can walk you through what they did and the difference it made.
5. How would they work with your IT team in a co-managed arrangement?
If you have internal IT you want to keep, ask how they’d work alongside your team. You want a partner that fills the gaps your team doesn’t cover and shares what they know, not one that takes over or works around your people.
One more question belongs in that evaluation conversation – where would we start? How a provider answers it tells you a lot. If they want to automate everything at once, that’s a red flag. A good MIP starts with one process.
Where should we start with automation?
Starting your automation journey with one process is the best way to go because that’s where the learning happens. It’s also the way to start building automation capability in your team.
When you automate a process, you must write down how the work actually gets done, often for the first time. That’s usually the job of the people who do the work, and they see things that others can’t.
They know which steps stopped making sense a long time ago and which ones eat up their time. Bringing employees into mapping the processes they’re involved with is where those details finally come out.
As people examine their workflows while automating them, they start to understand how automation fits into what they do. They gain an understanding of where it belongs and where it doesn’t. As they work with automation, and are engaged in identifying other opportunities, they themselves become part of your organization’s automation capability.
The return on starting small and achieving success one automation at a time is that you get automations that work, improved processes, and people who are savvy about how automation can become part of their day-to-day. That’s when automation stops being a set of projects and becomes part of how your business runs.
Read about our one process at a time approach to automation.
How does XPERTECHS deliver managed intelligence?
AI and automation have become part of our own business at XPERTECHS. Building that capability is what evolved us from a managed services provider into a managed intelligence provider.
Now our business model has five core delivery areas that encompass everything a modern business needs for predictable, secure IT systems, plus the capability to help clients leverage modern technology.
Service Delivery – Support desk, problem resolution, Microsoft 365 modern workplace
Centralized Service – Backup and disaster recovery, security and endpoint protection
Technology Alignment – Standardization, best practices, gap analysis and compliance
Strategy – IT roadmap and planning, new technology implementation
AI and Process Automation – Design, implement and manage automation solutions
Read how we helped an engineering firm automate and improve a key process
Is it time to switch from managed services to managed intelligence?
Twenty years ago, when most IT companies were still doing break/fix, we saw managed services coming and made the switch early. Being early gave our clients an advantage they didn’t have before. AI and process automation present a similar scenario.
The businesses that view modern technology as a competitive advantage are the ones that will pull ahead, and the ones that wait will have to play catch up. Because we built our automation capability early, we’re on the leading edge of our industry, so our clients can be on the leading edge of theirs.
So the question before you is whether it’s time for your business to make its move. If your current provider can keep your systems running but can’t help you use AI and automation to improve your operations and enable success, it’s time to explore what an MIP can do for you.
