As a business owner, you have relationships with your vendors that must be cultivated and maintained in some way on the off chance you need them for support. However, working with vendors can be stressful and downright frustrating at times. Let’s examine a specific situation that demonstrates these challenges and what you can do about it.
There is certainty in that the small business can benefit from new technology. A problem sometimes rears its head when a business wants to improve their technology all at once and the costs associated with both implementation and downtime start to spike. For the responsible business owner, it has to be a matter of putting need over want, and instituting solutions that will work to build profitability, which will ultimately provide the capital needed to institute new technology. Today, we will look at some technology implementations that many small businesses consider, and how the implementation will bring the best return on investment.
Managed IT service is a great way for the small business to save money on their IT support costs while still getting the coverage they need. One of the ways that an MSP is able to keep their costs down is by proactive maintenance. If an MSP had to fix every computer problem a company had after it became a problem, the service would largely be untenable for the small business. Today, we look at the proactive maintenance feature of our IT management strategy and how our clients save a lot of money as a result.
If you’ve recently signed up for IT services from a third-party, there are a couple of things you need to know before getting started. Likewise, there are a couple of things that your service provider needs to know before they can get started. Here’s a short checklist that will help you make a smooth transition to a new IT service provider.
Start with a Network Audit
Before it’s possible to improve and get a handle on your organization’s infrastructure, it’s important to understand where you are and where you want to be in the future. This is what a network audit accomplishes, and many IT providers will start their service offerings with one. This is because it’s important to get a clear understanding of what your organization’s needs are before attempting to build off it. A network audit exposes weak points, including app usage, bandwidth expenditure, security issues, and more.
Signing up for a network audit can be the first step your business takes alongside a managed service provider toward a fruitful, mutually-beneficial relationship. It doesn’t hurt to get second opinions during this phase, but remember that some IT providers might just use an audit to generate a laundry list of things to sell you. It’s equally important that you prioritize the most critical issues found in the audit.
Review Your Service Level Agreement
What does your IT provider do for your organization? Chances are that, in your meetings with your service provider, you’ve established a service level agreement. This agreement determines the type of service that you receive from your provider, including the number of workstations and servers to be maintained, the amount of cloud storage offered, the terms and conditions regarding what the service provider is obligated to cover, what kind of timetable to expect for IT support, and so on.
Every service provider is different, but you should strive for complete and total transparency at all times. You’ve heard the phrase, “Know what you pay for,” it applies to managed IT services all too well. It’s also worth bringing up questions about escalation. If the provider typically has a 3-day response time for standard support, then what happens when it’s holding up an important initiative or an employee can’t get their job done until it gets fixed? Will that cost more? If so, how much?
Tell Your Employees Who to Contact for Assistance
Chances are that if you have a new IT provider, you may have had an old go-to guy for all your technology troubles. Therefore, it’s important that each one of your employees know about the change in protocol so they don’t continue to call your old break-fix IT provider for help with their workstations or otherwise. In part, this is one of the benefits of working with a managed IT service provider. It gives your employees a one-stop shop for any IT-related troubles, so they don’t have to hound vendors or pay for expensive help desk support.
Instead, find out what kind of end-user support is included (if any) and give your employees a phone number or email address to contact when they need help. You should also be able to set up restrictions as far as who can request support, and who in your organization can incur billable charges. You don’t want to open the floodgates to your users in cases where one-on-one support is billable without you first knowing what these expenses will look like.
What it basically comes down to is maintaining clear and concise communication with your new IT provider, and that’s something we at Advantage IT Management take great pride in. We want you to know exactly what you’re getting from us. We can effectively help your business simplify the transition to a new service provider and minimize downtime in the process.
If you are looking at a new managed IT services provider, it doesn’t hurt to get a second opinion to make sure that your business is being taken care of. To learn more, reach out to us at 251-662-9770.
There’s no question, technology has been a great benefit for some businesses, especially when it works right. However, if something goes wrong, the opposite can happen, halting or hindering productivity until the issue is resolved. In cases like these, businesses need a resource that can get them back up and running, ASAP. A managed service provider is designed to be that resource.
If we asked you how effective your current IT support is, what would your answer be? Do you find yourself waiting around for service technicians more often than not? Does it seem like you are always calling support about the same annoying issue? Regardless of who your IT service provider is, if they don’t offer managed IT services, you’re at a significant disadvantage in the business world.
Managed IT services are all the rage in the business world, and for good reason. They allow businesses of all varieties the ability to focus on their goals rather than their IT maintenance. However, it’s not always easy to understand every single service offered by MSPs like us provide. Here are three great services that we can provide for your business.
There is no denying the value that an in-house information technology resource can offer a company. However, many small and medium-sized businesses might have a difficult time finding room in their budget to hire additional in-house resources. In cases like these, turning to other, external resources can provide a helpful boost to your IT.
The modern business needs a reliable source of information technology support. Historically, this was provided through a method known as break/fix—if your business technology was to break, a technician would come in to fix it. While this approach works, there are many trade-offs to using it that a business shouldn’t have to accept. Now that there is the managed services model, businesses no longer do.
Business owners have a lot on their plate. Even the smallest businesses have a lot of moving parts that need to be attended to, which all add up to a mammoth amount of stress for their owners. Perhaps most obviously, financial matters contribute greatly to this angst.
Antivirus is one of the simplest means of protecting a computer network, but that doesn't necessarily mean that a business should overlook the benefits of having an antivirus. If a business doesn’t have antivirus on its systems, it’s usually because they really don’t believe they are in any danger. The harsh reality emerges after a data breach. Regardless of its size, any business holds the kind of data that would draw in thieves and rogues. From Social Security numbers to credit card numbers to many other kinds of personally identifiable information, businesses possess plenty of data that can bring in a pretty penny on the black market.
