When collaboration gets complicated: Why IT leaders are rethinking managed services

Enterprise collaboration technology has become an essential part of daily business operations, but managing it is increasingly complicated. What was once a relatively isolated audiovisual (AV) environment is now deeply integrated with enterprise IT infrastructure, unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platforms, and security systems.

For IT leaders, that convergence is creating new demands on resources, expertise, and budgets.

“Complexity has increased dramatically in the environments that customers have to manage today,” says Karen Klosinski, VP Product & Solutions at AVI-SPL.

Supporting these environments now requires expertise across multiple disciplines, while frequent software updates introduce a pace of change that many internal IT teams struggle to maintain. As collaboration environments become more complex, organizations are reconsidering whether traditional support models can keep pace.

Recognizing when IT needs additional support

Several indicators can signal that an organization’s approach to collaboration management needs to evolve. Platform migrations, for example, can require extensive retraining or hiring to develop new technical capabilities. IT leaders may also find that maintaining collaboration systems consumes resources needed for more strategic initiatives. Meanwhile, recurring technical issues and declining employee satisfaction can suggest that existing support models are falling short.

These challenges don’t necessarily require organizations to outsource everything. Managed services can supplement internal capabilities, giving IT teams access to specialized expertise without the expense and difficulty of building every competency in-house.

That economic argument is becoming increasingly relevant to smaller organizations. As demand for specialized skills grows, even midsize businesses may struggle to justify the cost of hiring experienced administrators for platforms such as Microsoft Teams.

Moving beyond reactive support

The greatest value of managed services comes from improving how collaboration environments perform over time. An effective provider should deliver more than service-level agreements and troubleshooting. It should analyze recurring problems, identify underlying causes, and recommend improvements that reduce future disruptions.

For example, repeated failures involving the same technology might warrant configuration changes, upgrades, or replacement planning. Providers can also help coordinate changes across internal IT groups, particularly when network modifications affect collaboration systems.

The ultimate measure of success is the employee experience. As Klosinski explains, “It’s not the ticket count, it’s the, you know, we’re helping your business work seamlessly.”

This proactive approach allows IT leaders to focus less on recurring operational issues and more on initiatives that support business growth.

Building a model that scales with the business

Collaboration requirements rarely remain static. As organizations expand or consolidate, adopt new platforms, and adjust staffing, managed services can provide the flexibility to accommodate these changes without continually rebuilding internal support capabilities.

AVI-SPL offers both remote-centric and on-site managed services for AV and UCC environments, allowing organizations to select an approach aligned with their operational requirements and network access policies. For CIOs evaluating providers, the priority should be a long-term partnership built around technical expertise, transparent performance reporting, shared operational standards, and continuous optimization.

As collaboration technology becomes more deeply embedded in business operations, the ability to manage it effectively will increasingly depend on having the right expertise, processes, and flexibility in place.

Learn more about how AVI-SPL’s Enterprise Managed Services can help your organization simplify AV and UCC management, improve collaboration experiences, and continuously optimize performance at scale.