How does an IT support relationship go bad? It could be that you’ve outgrown your provider. It’s hard to know for sure if that’s the cause of your problems because the signs can be subtle. What’s more, the situation didn’t happen overnight but crept up on you slowly. Everything was great when you first started working together, but now you feel like you’re on a plateau, or maybe even going backwards. And that’s not just IT, but your whole business. When you outgrow your IT provider, it means that your needs are more than they can handle. It could be […]

When IT support isn’t there when you need it, you can feel like you’re falling into a black hole with no way out. Not only does slow IT support response cause frustration for employees, it impacts your whole business. What you end up with is technology that hinders operations instead of enabling them. What happens when IT support is always slow or doesn’t show up at all? Employees lose confidence that IT can help so they stop calling support at all. People try to fix their own issues which diverts them from their work. They ask coworkers for IT help […]

When you’ve decided that you’re done with underperforming IT and you’re looking for a way to turn your situation around fast, Managed IT Services is the solution. Your IT department may have done very well in the past to effectively manage IT and cybersecurity. However, there’s no denying that technology has evolved at a breakneck pace and continuing to do what you’ve always done isn’t going to keep up. You may never have considered bringing in third-party IT support because you think you can’t afford it, or you simply don’t feel like you know enough yet to make an informed […]

What’s the transition to a managed IT services model going to be like? That’s the question that comes up next after you’ve decided that you need to do something different with IT, and managed services are the solution to your problems. Whether you’ve picked a provider or you’re still evaluating your short list, asking questions about what the transition to the new services will look like will help you to be prepared. The managed service provider (MSP) should have an established onboarding process that they follow to get clients started with services. The goal of onboarding is not just to […]

When you’ve decided that managed IT services are a good option for your business and you’re evaluating different companies, you need to understand what’s included and what’s not included in their monthly fee. Evaluating managed services provider (MSP) costs isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so having questions to guide your conversation about what to expect as far as costs is imperative. Before we go any further, let’s identify a price range for managed IT services prices. In general, you can expect to pay between $75 and $250 per user per month so what you pay depends in large part on the […]

What if your IT manager resigned today? What if two or more of your internal IT team needed time off at the same time? What if maternity/paternity leave for multiple IT staff overlapped? What if everyone in the IT department got food poisoning from the takeout meal they shared? We’re getting a little melodramatic here but the point that we’re making is that when you have a small internal IT team, you’re just one situation away from big trouble, especially in a tight job market. How can you make sure that you’re always staffed even if something happens to pull […]

As a business leader, you might be hesitant to make a change with what you’re doing with IT because you don’t have the technical background needed to compare different managed IT service companies. If your goal is to augment your internal IT team, there will certainly be some technical questions that your IT manager will want answered. However, whether you’re looking for a co-managed or fully outsourced solution, what you, as an executive, really need to determine is: As you gather the information that will answer these two questions, you’ll be able to paint a picture of what it will […]

When your business runs on technology (and whose doesn’t?) you need to be confident that your IT team has the expertise and bandwidth to do everything that needs to be done. Whether you have an internal IT manager and staff, or someone “good with technology” overseeing IT, there can come a time when you’re not convinced that what they can provide is enough. This puts your organization in a precarious position because when the balls start to drop, you’re going to suffer the impact. Impacts like downtime, employee and customer frustration, loss of competitive advantage, and even cyber-attacks. The good […]