Think of an IT managed service provider (MSP) as an extension of your IT department. They manage all aspects of your IT infrastructure and ensure you are operating at peak efficiency without wasting resources.
It’s more cost-effective for businesses to work with a managed service provider than hiring a full-time IT specialist and providing them with ongoing training. The hard-to-find skill gap in IT further means that your in-house tech team will often run into issues that require outside help.
But identifying a competent IT managed service provider from a run-of-the-mill vendor can be difficult. Here are a few questions you should ask a potential IT partner before hiring them to make the search easier.
What Are Your IT Services and Offerings?
It is important to check the range of offerings an MSP provides before agreeing to any business deal. But first, you have to identify your IT resources, needs, gaps, weaknesses, and areas that need improvement. From there, it becomes a little easier to find a managed service provider that can meet all these demands.
Ask the MSP about their ticketing system and what the end-user experience looks like. How quickly can they resolve a potential issue? Learn how they do damage control once their tools detect the presence of an anomaly.
What Experience Do You Have in My Industry?
You don’t want someone who’s a jack-of-all-trades. For optimal performance, you need a managed service provider who understands the nuances in your industry. It is not a good idea to work with an IT partner who doesn’t understand your industry-specific requirements. The good idea is to ask the MSP about the number of clients they have in the same industry as yours.
If they even have one client in an industry that overlaps with yours, you’re in good business.
What Security Credentials Do You Have?
Your data is private, which means you need to take measures to protect it. This is why you want to ensure that the MSP takes a proactive approach to security, including all aspects of physical and digital precautions to manage risks. They should be able to explain their cybersecurity protocol to you, including how they handle data storage and how they backup information for robust protection.
What is Your Availability for IT Support?
This is the first and foremost thing to check when hiring an MSP. Technical difficulties and cyber security attacks are inevitable and you can’t predict when they’ll occur. This is why you need an IT managed service provider to handle any security threat or software bugs to prevent unexpected downtime and network errors.
This means that the MSP should be available round-the-clock, with guaranteed IT monitoring throughout the day. This plays a vital role in identifying cyber attacks and the failure of critical systems. The key is to detect and fix them early before they can cause damage.
Can Your Services Scale and Grow with My Company?
Your business needs will change every now and then to reflect industry trends. The last thing you want is for your MSP to restrict that growth because they’re unable to keep up with the trends. This is why you need to look for a vendor that offers a robust service offering, including infrastructure, cybersecurity, cloud, and network management.
An IT managed service provider will help you determine what kind of services you need so that your company can continue to scale.
Marshall Info Tech has a robust service offering that scales with your business needs. We offer customized solutions after studying your industry requirements to align with your exact requirements. We focus on using proactive solutions that predict attacks before they occur and prevent them from hurting your bottom line.
Are you ready to partner with an IT managed service provider that can empower you with secure, reliable, and resilient IT infrastructure? Get in touch with us to learn more.