Outsourcing IT support to managed service providers is an increasingly popular choice for businesses.
Outsourcing IT services ensures that overall quality of your IT infrastructure improves, and your employees can work smoothly.
The end quality of IT solutions will depend heavily on the outsourced partner. Your IT managed provider is a partner that must be able to meet the needs of your business and anticipate problems.
This means it is important to have a good IT provider assess and carefully choose one that suits your business.
Communication and transparency
Communication and transparency are essential for any good IT partner. Here, you need to be sure that your IT provider communicates quickly and reliably even during peak periods.
It's also crucial that you have access to data such as performance indicators, security data and KPIs. You need a way to see what your IT partner is doing, how your IT solutions are doing.
Service options
How big do you want your new IT provider's organization to be? Ideally, you want about the same size of your own company. That way you can act as equal partners.
If they are too big, you can't influence functions and direction because your contract doesn't matter. If they are too small, they cannot meaningfully scale and grow to keep up with you as you scale up.
IT services and solutions offered
Different managed IT solution providers may meet different needs, offer different types of solutions and possibly target different organizational stages. It is important to match actual solutions to what you need.
Some important considerations are:
- Pricing model- Do you pay a fixed monthly fee or pay for usage?
- Technologies - Ensure that new solutions are compatible with existing solutions.
- Services - Does your IT provider offer maintenance? Monitoring? Network optimization? Hardware? Choose a solution that meets the full spectrum of your needs.
It is often more expensive to purchase solutions from different vendors than to pay a little more for those services through a full-service IT provider. Find an organization that offers everything you need, conduct a cost analysis based on all your options and make sure you get the best deal before agreeing to anything.
IT Contract and SLA
Your contract can help you make a hiring decision. A good contract describes service level agreements, such as uptime guarantees, performance indicators, response times and reactions to problems, critical issues and complaints.
If these are not included in the contract, request them as part of a secondary SLA and sign it as part of the contract. These Service Level Agreements should be consistent with the needs of your organization and organizational goals. Otherwise, IT problems could hinder your ability to deliver to your own customers.
Budget and ROI
It is critical to calculate the total cost for your IT provider, create cost estimates and use value estimates to calculate a potential ROI. This can help you decide whether outsourcing is the best move for your organization.
For example, if an IT service provider costs more but offers continuous optimization and implementation of new technology as part of the contract, it may be a better investment than a cheaper solution that does not.
HE search for an IT provider is an increasingly common way to cut costs and improve the quality of those services. As a result, you probably have dozens of providers to choose from. Many will offer specific or specialized services ranging from basic hardware installation to full-service managed solutions. Choosing one should depend largely on the needs of your organization, existing teams and the scope of your IT needs.
Teamtel as an IT partner
Teamtel is a Belgian IT managed service provider for SMEs. We help you proactively support your IT environment. In addition, we provide super fast support in case of questions.
Schedule your no-obligation online introductory consultation today!
