The IT department and the user community have neither the training nor the resources to perform day-to-day service requests and maintenance for the ECM system. One thing to consider is that these are long-term, line-of-business systems and need professional services to deal with them.

Whether you already have an existing ECM system or just starting on the path to one, consider using a Managed Service Provider (MSP). The many benefits of an MSP are:

1. It provides dedicated, on-site, on-call, or remote support for users, which will improve overall productivity as issues and questions are successfully resolved quickly.
2. Because the MSP is also knowledgeable about your specific industry and business—and they support a wide variety of similar businesses—they can offer best practices and provide advice to business users and departments based on their in-depth industry and ECM application knowledge.
3. MSPs are experts in areas that you may be lacking, such as workflow, records management, compliance, and information governance.
4. Because the MSP is tasked with system upkeep and maintenance, your system should have a higher level of uptime—proactive support instead of reactive by avoiding preventable issues.
5. MSPs increase overall satisfaction, which leads to greater user adoption of the system.
6. Through reduced operating costs, increased productivity, and greater overall system usage, long-term cost of ownership may be reduced and your return on investment may be increased.