How to Choose the Right Managed IT Services Provider

As the world of IT continues to grow more complex and expensive, more and more small-to-midsize businesses (SMBs) are turning to managed IT services providers to expand the capabilities of their IT teams.

Though managed IT services are incredibly valuable, they can often appear to be expensive (especially relative to traditional ‘Break/Fix’ services). Before you sign a contract with a managed IT services provider, you should be certain that you’ve chosen the right partner for your business.

With these 4 quick tips, you can quickly and easily find out if you’re working with a great managed IT services provider – or if you’d be better off looking for another partner.

1. Ensure They Ask the Right Questions About Your Business  

When you consult with a potential managed IT services provider, you should make sure that they’re actively engaged in learning about your business.

They should ask you questions about your business, your technology experience, and your specific needs. Are you using any cloud services or backups? Do you have a disaster recovery plan in place? Are you interested in upgrading your IT infrastructure? How is your network security? Who are your current vendors? What does the next 12-24 months look like for your company and industry?

If your potential partner is asking these questions, that’s a good sign – they want to learn more about your business, and clearly have an interest in working with you.

2. Select A Managed IT Services Provider With 24/7 Support

Any managed services provider you’re interested in working with should provide 24/7 support. Proactive, comprehensive support is not optional in the hyper-competitive world of modern IT. Your potential managed IT services provider should be willing to provide you with all-inclusive support – both remotely and on-premises, when necessary. Not sure if you need 24/7 coverage? Many of our prospective clients have had the same question. Read why we include it as part of our standard offering.

3. Ask to see Service Level Performance Reports (not SLAs)

Most Managed Service Providers will include a Service Level Agreement (SLA) as part of their agreement.  They will outline things like guaranteed time frames for response to service tickets.  Certainly, these can be important when understanding responsibilities before entering a new contract.

Here’s the issue – SLAs are generally easily met, and written to benefit the service provider.

A 4-hour response on 90% of tickets?  Is that truly acceptable?  We see it all the time.

What matters is real, recent performance.  Our Help Desk team closed 128 service requests last week. Our average time to response was 13 minutes, and our Average Time to Resolution was 1.7 hours. That’s the difference between an SLA and actual client experience.

4. Request Interviews with Previous Clients

A sure-fire way to assess the quality of a managed IT services provider is to request an interview with current and previous clients.

Any above-board managed IT services provider will be more than willing to put you in touch with previous clients and customers. Talking to previous clients will allow you to get a much better understanding of the day-to-day service you can expect from your potential partner.

Need Managed IT Services In Winnipeg? Choose 365 Technologies!

It can be difficult to choose the right managed IT services provider – but these 4 tips are sure to help! And if you need managed IT services in Winnipeg, 365 Technologies is an ideal partner!

We offer 24/7 service 365 days of the year, and our staff is packed with experts who specialize in maximizing the efficiency of your IT systems. We also can provide you with vendor management services, protect your company from security vulnerabilities, and much more.

We provide you with Worry-Free IT™ – guaranteed! Don’t wait – contact us today, and see how why 365 Technologies is the leading outsourced IT provider for 15-100 employee companies in Winnipeg.