A company’s managed IT service provider can improve many aspects of its departments, from increasing productivity to guaranteeing access to expertise. By ensuring regulatory compliance, your MSP attracts numerous benefits for your business, so you should choose your provider wisely.
That’s because we may find MSPs inefficient at times. Our collaborators for managed IT services might unwillingly sabotage the brand image, whether it’s through poor communication, improper customer service, or negligent charging. While these situations are less impactful, working with the wrong providers can expose you to cybersecurity issues and compliance risks.
Therefore, your business needs to follow a series of guidelines for an adequate IT MSP that fits your needs and requirements. Here’s a brief list of recommendations to consider.
Understand your business
Choosing a managed IT services provider is much easier when you understand your business entirely, from its strengths to weaknesses. This aspect will help negotiate offers and services as you know the company’s worth and opportunities.
Hence, ensure to go through your:
- Business goals;
- Current technology used;
- Business processes;
- Needs;
- Budget;
Analogize your reports with development opportunities. Maybe you need more automation or want to enhance your cloud service capabilities. These details will guide you in checking quotes from different service providers, so you’ll better understand how to balance your budget with service quality.
Know what to look into a provider
Comparing different providers means thorough research considering important aspects. For instance, the first thing to examine between competitors is the company’s expertise because their experience in certain areas matters. Usually, an IT MSP should be able to streamline processes, meet compliance, and manage operations in accordance with different industries and business scopes.
A company’s reputation also tells a lot about its efficiency and customer service. Check customers’ opinions on social media and websites to see the general opinion about the MSP services, but analyzing employee relations and partnerships is equally essential.
Other essential aspects include their quality assurance processes, responsiveness, and the ability to scale with your business.
Examine service portfolios
Besides outside opinions and reviews, examining an IT’s MSP service portfolio clearly helps you see how much they can help you. These brands generally offer services in network management, cybersecurity, cloud solutions, and data backup and recovery.
However, you should also confirm they provide an instant IT helpdesk. This will help protect your business in case of a network problem since timely communication can ensure a rapid response and minimum downtime. At the same time, being an SMB would require the provider to offer a virtual CIO to develop the best IT strategy.
Finally, professional IT MSPs serve companies from a wide range of industries besides finance. Healthcare, entertainment, and manufacturing companies need these services as much as other sectors, and the right MSP knows how to tailor their services accordingly.
Review disaster recovery plans
Disaster recovery plans are one of the most overlooked business operations, as many companies consider they won’t be the target of such an occurrence. Such happenings can result from mere errors but also natural causes, in which case the business loses access to the IT infrastructure. We can count as disasters:
- Natural calamities like an earthquake;
- Pandemics;
- Cyberattacks like ransomware;
- Biochemical attacks;
- Technological hazards like power outages;
- Hardware failure;
To minimize the effects of these occurrences on businesses, they must employ a disaster recovery plan that prevents, detects, and corrects issues. When it comes to ensuring disaster recovery for the IT department, businesses working with MSPs should receive data backup, testing, and off-site data storage to help recover from disruptive events as fast as possible.
Agree on communication channels
Since their support is needed most of the time, an MSP should be able to communicate with your business efficiently, ensuring continuous availability and proper staff expertise. Of course, depending on your company’s industry and needs, you may need IT management support more or less than others, which is why you must check this aspect.
Verifying the communication channels used will also help you see how easy it would be to contact them. Ideally, the MSP has an email address and a phone number for fast contact, but some also offer ticketing systems so you can be the first to report issues.
At the same time, it would be best to resonate with the support staff because great collaboration nurtures improvement. Customer service should have the expertise to withstand almost any urgent situation while being prompt.
There are many benefits to outsourcing your IT-managed service provider
Outsourcing IT support allows the company to access professional services from teams specialized in your industry. At the same time, it reduces IT overhead, ensuring your team can focus on core business requirements and not mostly routine maintenance. This optimizes your in-house resources and offers your business a competitive advantage.
Outsourcing this service also delivers proactive monitoring, especially when received 24/7. In case of an emergency, it can lower downtime and protect the company from negative publicity and potential regulatory troubles.
Another benefit of outsourcing IT MSP is scalability. In today’s dynamic business environment, companies must be one step ahead of the competition. This means they can easily adapt to changing trends and supply their products or services, which sustains their processes. This means being able to scale everything accordingly and on time, requiring time and expertise.
Finally, working with an IT MSP ensures predictable costs since you receive a transparent outlook of the expenses for your business needs to be met. In many cases, these services come with fixed monthly fees, but additional costs might arise from time to time, which are communicated effectively.
Have you chosen your IT MSP yet?
Having a managed IT service provider collaborate with your business offers a plethora of benefits, allowing you to stay ahead of the competition and protect your brand image. That’s why you must choose it wisely based on factors like service portfolio, communication channels, and disaster recovery plans.
