What is Managed Application Service (MAS)?

What is Managed Application Services (MAS)?

Gartner found in a recent study that IT executives see talent shortages as the most significant adoption barrier to 64% of emerging technologies. As technology continues to rise in importance, companies are looking to outsource a majority of their IT requirements to mitigate the challenge and cost of obtaining skilled talent.

Managed Application Services or MAS is a support agreement for companies to secure a set number of service hours a month through their provider to add additional assistance for their team. MAS helps small and midsize companies extend their IT teams without the additional investment in hiring and training new staff to get critical post implementation work done.

MAS agreements vary based on a company’s requirements; however, they often include items such as:

• Set number of service hours per month or quarter with unused hours carried over across future periods
• Reduced standard hourly rates for all services
• Designated support resources to maintain consistency
• Discounted pricing on additional services

MAS enables companies with the tools, resources, and knowledge to compete with larger organizations, without putting strain on their internal resources. It can be used to implement things like system to system integrations, advanced reporting, new user training, customizations to improve business efficiencies and many more.

Benefits of MAS

The National Center for the Middle Market (NCMM) found that 52% of companies view digital transformation as a critical initiative to effectively compete in today’s marketplace. MAS offers SMBs alternative strategies to mitigate the challenges associated with finding additional dollars and resources to invest in their IT strategy.

MAS provides a pre-determined, predictable cost structure for companies to easily plan and forecast their year in advance. Companies can plan for specific projects without having to worry about the bandwidth of their internal teams as providers have resources available on a scalable basis depending on the scope of the work. This not only helps in planning but reduces the fluctuation of work on your internal team—allowing them to focus on their day-to-day tasks.

In addition, a MAS agreement gives companies access to knowledge and expertise that is often extremely difficult to find when looking for talent. Providers often have senior consultants and advisors available to help guide a company’s strategic vision, offer insights and advice on best practices. This service can be invaluable to SMBs looking to scale quickly and implement processes built to last. Look for MAS agreements that assign company-specific resources to help build continuity, rapport and understanding of your business and its processes. This will help ensure that work is done more efficiently, while feeling like your vendor is a true extension of your team.

MAS gives companies the opportunity to take a proactive approach to maintenance. At VistaVu, we include a yearly ERP Assessment with out MAS agreements to identify areas of improvement and optimization. Users can also use MAS hours throughout the year to enhance their systems, train new users, customize reports, and more.

Partnering with VistaVu

VistaVu has been providing MAS since 2017, most notably with Allied Universal Technology Service (AUTS), a sub-division of Allied Universal (AUS). Throughout the years and over many acquisition integrations, VistaVu and Allied have formed a strategic partnership where VistaVu provides consulting and support services to support different projects. Working as an extension to the AUS team, VistaVu provides flexible and experienced staffing that can shrink and grow to support each specific integration. Learn more about this partnership here.

The true value of MAS is the ability to improve business outcomes through performance updates. By making continued investments into your technology with guidance from a strategic partner, companies can build and execute a technology strategy to effectively scale for growth.

To learn more about MAS and our other service offerings, reach out to our team here.