Third Party Maintenance Providers: What They Are and Why You Need One

Analyst firm Gartner conducted a survey of companies to determine what their IT budget priorities were going into 2016. Of the companies that participated, 95% prioritized increasing efficiency and business processes, with 43% of those companies defining that as a major priority. In addition, 91% of surveyed companies prioritized the goal of reducing IT costs.

Unlike many other corporate departments, such as sales or service, IT often provides no direct contribution to a company’s profits. Nonetheless, an efficient IT department can significantly increase the smooth operations of profit-generating departments or, conversely, can hamstring those departments if it fails to function as it should.

What it ends up coming down to is a question of whether a business should handle its own IT needs internally or rely on Third Party Maintenance Providers (TPM) to manage IT services. This question is a very simple one to answer once you understand what a TPM is and what services and benefits one can provide.

What does a Third Party Maintenance Provider do

A Third Party Maintenance Provider is simply an organization that provides IT services and support that fall outside of a company’s normal skill set, or on a scale that a small to medium-sized company might struggle with.

This is especially the case in the corporate IT market where a TPM can bring a wide range of skills and infrastructure expertise to bear on behalf of the client organization. IT infrastructure services that a TPM can provide include data center management, IT as a Service (ITaaS), desktop computing support, hyperscale data centers, and more. 

Why you need a Third Party Maintenance Provider

While many executives like the thought of keeping everything internal, for many small to medium-sized companies the reality is that they simply cannot compete with larger competitors handling everything in-house.

One of the many limiting factors is cost. Recent statistics show that the average IT worker earns anywhere from $61,000 to $99,000 per year, depending on the specific job description and title. Multiply that across an entire department and it quickly becomes apparent how expensive an in-house IT staff can be. Even companies that invest in an expensive, in-house IT department often find that there are still gaps in the department’s skill set that can leave the company at a competitive disadvantage.

In today’s economy, few things are as important as quality IT support. Although it may not contribute to a company’s bottom line, it nonetheless can have a profound impact on a company’s success or failure.

To learn more about the many benefits of an employing a TPM, download our infographic:

About Maintech

Maintech was founded in 1973 as a Third Party Maintenance (TPM) company delivering IT Hardware Maintenance services to the Financial Services and Telecommunications marketplaces.  Over the years, Maintech has evolved into a truly Independent Services Organization (ISO) delivering a comprehensive portfolio of single-source Managed Services for IT Infrastructure Support including Hardware Maintenance, NOC Monitoring, Server and Network Administration, Cloud Services, Help Desk, IT Asset Management/Destruction and many more.  Maintech serves customers ranging from the SMB to the Fortune 100 global enterprise marketplace.  Collectively, Maintech and its sister company DecisionOne, represent the largest IT Infrastructure Services-only company in the market today. 

For more information about Maintech’s involvement with The Wounded Warrior Project, contact Germán Hurtado at (973) 330-3230 or via email at ghurtado@maintech.com , or visit www.maintech.com.