Many businesses choose to outsource their IT services because it benefits over recruiting and managing an in-house IT team; however, it’s important that you ensure that the managed service provider you choose is offering you the best value for your money.
Flexibility
Flexibility is one of the main reasons that companies choose to use MSPs for their IT requirements rather than recruiting and training an in-house IT team.
Using an MSP usually means that you can choose to scale up and scale down the level of IT support that you need, as and when you need to. For example, if you are running an IT project, it’s likely that you will need more IT support to implement the project and support users, and quickly resolve any bugs that occur as a result.
However, once the project is over, you might not need the same level of support. If you had employed IT staff yourself, you would be left with a lot of staff members that you possibly didn’t need once the project was over; however, if you’re using an MSP, you can tell them of your changed requirement, and they will manage the human resources side of things for you.
When you’re hiring an MSP from a top-rated IT support company, you should check that they are as flexible as your needs require them to be, ensuring they can adapt to your evolving business requirements and provide scalable solutions that align with your growth and technological advancements.
Response times
MSP’s have to prove themselves to be the best option out there, and this means that they will take things like SLAs (Service Level Agreements) seriously. SLAs are agreed timescales for resolving issues and delivering objectives.
If you work with an MSP, you can ask for information on their SLAs and how well they have performed against them in the past. This will give you a good idea of whether the MSP can perform at the level you want them to.
Expertise
A huge benefit to working with an MSP is that IT is their business, meaning that they will be focused on making sure their knowledge about the latest technologies is up to date.
You can utilize this knowledge when considering your options for IT services. When choosing an MSP, you should ensure that their areas of expertise match up with where your business is now and where you want to take it in the future.
On-site or off-site?
Finally, you should think about whether you want to work with an off-site MSP or if you would like to have a presence on site.
There are pros and cons to working remotely. For the majority of tasks, an off-site presence will be fine, but in some instances, you might want the option of having an on-site presence – for example, if a change has been made and training needs to be delivered.
Not all MSPs will offer an on-site presence, so if this is important to you, this is something you should check when reviewing potential providers.
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Marshal Hubs
Priyanka Srivastava
John Stephen