Managed Services Providers (MSPs) continue to be one of the fastest growing industries in the world of IT infrastructure management. Once cost-effective only for large conglomerates and multinationals, in recent years MSPs have become not just affordable but mission-critical for small-and-medium-sized businesses (SMBs).
But that same mission-critical nature of MSPs makes it more important than ever to ensure you’re picking the right provider for your business. “One size fits all” definitely does not apply to IT services and IT service management.
With so much on the line here are 10 things to consider to help select the right managed services provider.
1. The Right MSP Wants to Know All About Your Company
The wrong MSP wants you to know all about theirs.
The right MSP will want to know what you specifically need to keep your IT systems in top shape. What data requirements you have, state or federal security obligations. Anything specific to your company or industry instead of applying a blanket list of services.
The right MSP will see your business relationship not simply as client-customer, but as partners. They’ll want to understand everything about your business so they can tailor their services to you.
2. The Right MSP is Proactive
The wrong MSP is reactive.
The right MSP will constantly monitor the status of your company and be working to prevent the next problem from occurring.
Once-a-month status reports simply won’t cut it in today’s business environment.
Break/Fix is a broken model.
The right MSP will have a steady stream of diagnostics to pull from so, say if your company always has increased demands on the second of every month, they’re prepared for it. If a new patch for a server has been created, they’re installing it as soon as it clears that Q&A.
The right MSP will have the scalable services that will keep pace as your company grows.
3. The right MSP Has a Dedicated Account Manager
The wrong MSP puts you on hold while they look up your account.
The right MSP assigns an account manager to your company whose job it is to know your IT needs better than anyone else.
4. The Right MSP Has 24 x 7 x 365 Remote Monitoring.
The wrong MSP will find out about a problem after you call them.
This is a highly interconnected, multiply-dependent world. A single firewall goes down, and within minutes your entire infrastructure can become compromised no matter how many cities your business spans.
The right MSP will always be monitoring the health of your firewalls, servers, network-enabled devices, switches, etc. wherever they’re located.
5. The Right MSP Offers Remote and Onsite Support
The wrong MSP relegates everything offshore.
There’s an amazing amount that can be handled offshore, but sometimes you just have to have bodies on the ground. When that happens the last thing you want to hear is, “Sorry, we don’t offer that service.”
The right MSP will have a tech at your business on a regular basis performing preventative maintenance and upgrades and making sure that everything is running at peak performance.
6. The Right MSP Offers 24 x 7 x 365 Support with a Guaranteed Response Time
The wrong MSP keeps office hours.
It’s 11:00 p.m. before a holiday weekend and your system goes down. You call, email, and text, but the call center puts your issue into a queue and it’s hours before anybody gets back to you. Meanwhile, your company is hemorrhaging money, and your bosses are calling, emailing, and texting you.
The right MSP has people on staff who are available anytime day or night, and they’ll have the skills and experience to fix the issues.
7. The Right MSP Will Have a Long Track Record
The wrong MSP won’t have one.
If you’re going to outsource your entire IT department, you need to know your MSP has not only been around for years but it’s going to be going strong years from now.
The right MSP has a long list of success stories and case histories and a strong business plan to ensure their continued growth right alongside yours.
IT is a mission-critical part of your business. You don’t want to hand that off to a company that’s still got its training wheels on.
Breadth and Depth
Too many MSPs have one or two superstars and the rest of their team are barely better than the admin who Googled a fix for the broken copier.
The right MSP has multiple techs with multiple certifications and re-certs across a variety of platforms and technologies, and years of experience in the field and in the cloud.
If the tech who typically handles your account is on vacation, their replacement has to be just as qualified.
8. The Right MSP Will Be Ready for Disaster.
The wrong MSP won’t know what hit them. Or you.
Tornadoes, floods, hackers, or suicidal squirrels who cause a cascading power failure across three states. Bad things happen to good companies. Usually at the worst possible moment.
The right MSP will have your data backed up, emergency generators at the ready, and the latest anti-virus for whatever worm is making its way through the corporate world.
9. The Right MSP Offers a Full Range of Services
The wrong MSP is a one-trick pony.
They’re updating your security patches, maintaining firewalls and servers, running analytics, designing and analyzing your IT architecture, hosting your application, backing up your data, and much more.
The right MSP knows your IT department touches upon every facet of your company and can’t be summed up as “just” an anything.
10. The Right MSP Has the Right Attitude
The wrong MSP gives you attitude.
Of all of the departments in a business, IT is undoubtedly the least appreciated. When everything is going well, nobody notices. When something goes wrong, everybody notices and complains. Loudly.
The right MSP’s goal will be to make their customers ecstatic with the quality of service and support.
Hire an MSP with a can-do, get-it-done attitude that recognizes their customers are the only reason they’re in business. The MSP who views you as a burden will always place your interests second.
Denovo has been a market leader in enterprise applications and cloud services for over 25 years. We also offer industry-leading consultation and software solutions.