10 Questions for Your Managed Service Provider

Keeping track of the numerous tasks today’s IT departments must manage and complete often takes an army. Thus, many businesses are hiring managed service providers (MSP) to help lighten the load. But are these services really necessary and do they provide tangible value? Before a business jumps on the MSP bandwagon, it should consider several important factors and ask a lot of questions. Here are what we consider to be the 10 most important questions that you should ask your potential managed service provider before making a decision:

• How well will your managed service enable us to stay ahead of the competition?
• How will your managed service assist us in adopting the latest technologies more quickly?
• In what ways will your managed service assist us in converting our business to more cloud-consumable and digital-capable apps and services?
• What does your managed service do to provide us with appropriate levels of transparency into IT issues without becoming a distraction?
• How will your managed service identify and repair problems with our IT infrastructure and maximize our environment; and not just hide the mess from our view?
• How will your managed service enhance innovation and collaboration efforts within our enterprise?
• When it comes to bottom-line contributions to our overall innovation and efficiency, how will the cost of your managed service be recouped?
• How will your managed service enable us to be prepared for the next big disruptive technology wave, instead of impeding us from being in the forefront of the movement?
• In what ways will your managed service encourage a partnership with our company instead of simply providing another business transaction?
• How rapidly does your managed service program adopt and adapt to the latest and most important market trends, with complementary capabilities designed for compatibility with the latest technologies?

What’s the True Value for Your Company?

Any business with IT needs should consider hiring a managed service provider, and these questions should be the starting point of that search. After all, while IT often operates in the background, the reality is IT plays a huge role in your entire operation. In fact, every move your enterprise makes is affected by IT. IT not only helps improve innovation, but it also affects all your transaction activities, including communications, marketing, and sales. Without a healthy IT infrastructure, your entire company’s success could be in jeopardy.

Benefits of Managed Service Providers

What are the benefits of a MSP? Managed services don’t just hide the mess, they actually clean it up, by implementing the appropriate tools, experience, and practices to eliminate the mess. Furthermore, effective managed services also provide your company with a competitive edge by offering you increased efficiencies, faster technology, and improved internal communications. Thus, your company experiences additional innovations and the ability to implement the latest collaborative and digital services. Another benefit of hiring a MSP is improved security and compliance risk. Your MSP will know how to keep your data safe on a daily basis, and know how to keep your data safe during a disaster by implementing a disaster recovery plan.

Have the Right Conversation

Too often, the merits of managed service providers are merely measured by their ability to take messes off their customers’ hands and reduce their costs. However, MSPs offer so much more, with their real value residing in many other factors. For example, can your MSP help streamline operations, deliver more IT value to your business, remain innovative with the latest technologies, and actually clean up an IT mess after taking it off your hands? In the end, it all comes down to the conversation you hold with the MSP. Therefore, it’s up to you to steer the discussion in the right direction, ask the right questions, and then assess how valuable the MSP’s services truly are.

Ready to Discuss Managed Services?

The fact is there are numerous questions to ask an MSP, including the following suggestions from Stack.com.

• What are your service standards?
• What’s the reporting mechanism?
• What role do expert engineers play in the service?
• Who in your customer community can we talk to?
• What pricing models do you provide?

The bottom line, however, is it’s up to you to get the conversation started. If you would like to learn more about how your company could benefit from working with a managed service provider, please contact us today at New Era Technology by clicking here. We’re ready to have this important conversation with you.

Photo Credit: bernardlieverdink Flickr via Compfight cc

This article was first published on New Era Technology.