Choosing an IT Service Provider: Questions to Ask
Choose an IT service provider with deep industry knowledge and a proven track record. Grow with a reliable technology partner.
Questions to Ask When Choosing an IT Service Provider
Choosing an IT service provider starts with finding a partner who knows your industry inside and out. Your ideal technology partner brings deep knowledge of compliance standards and security protocols that match your specific business operations.
A provider’s proven track record shows their ability to support companies like yours through technical challenges and growth phases. Their mix of hands-on experience and clear communication helps build a partnership focused on keeping your operations running smoothly. Your next steps will determine how well your technology foundation supports your business goals.
Industry-Specific Expertise for IT Service Provider Selection
When choosing an IT service provider or managed IT services provider (MSP), one of the most important factors to consider is whether they have experience serving clients in your specific industry vertical. Each business has its own unique IT challenges, so it’s important to find a provider that can craft a customized plan tailored to your industry’s compliance requirements, cybersecurity needs, and overall IT environment.
Diverse Client Experience
At ASG, we work with a wide range of businesses, including:
- Department of Defense manufacturers
- Organizations subject to NIST standards
- Credit unions, banks, and other financial services firms
We also have many clients without strict compliance requirements. The key is to clearly communicate where you are in your IT journey when discussing your needs with potential service providers.
Importance of Clear Communication
If your business heavily relies on IT and simply cannot function without it, make that abundantly clear. The majority of our clients fall into this category. You should also make sure that the IT service provider has a solid understanding of your industry’s specific regulations. They should demonstrate expertise in industry-standard technologies and be transparent about their capabilities.
Finding the Right Fit
Keep in mind that not every service provider is the right fit for every client, and reputable providers will be honest about this. At ASG, we carefully evaluate potential clients, as we aim to establish long-term partnerships. The ideal IT service provider will tailor their services to your unique needs, your business, and the vertical you operate in. They should be able to integrate their solutions with your existing technology and have a good understanding of your current setup.
Workflow Impact and References
Additionally, they should discuss how their services can positively impact your workflows. When evaluating managed IT services, ask potential providers for referrals and case studies specific to your industry. This will allow you to speak with their existing clients and gain valuable insights into their strengths, weaknesses, and the aspects of their service that clients appreciate most.
By following these guidelines, you can find an IT service provider that has the industry-specific expertise needed to support your business effectively.
Service Level Agreements in Managed IT Services Evaluation
When choosing an IT service provider, it’s important to carefully evaluate their managed IT services and the service level agreements (SLAs) included in their contracts. While SLAs are a common feature, you should be cautious about relying too heavily on them.
The Limitations of SLAs
Many SLAs are designed to protect managed service providers (MSPs) who struggle to deliver consistent, high-quality service. If an MSP is consistently meeting the maximum thresholds outlined in their SLAs, it’s likely that their clients are not fully satisfied with the level of service they are receiving.
Most SLAs in the managed IT services industry are based on best effort or response time, rather than resolution time. This means that the MSP is only required to acknowledge and begin working on a ticket within a specified timeframe, but there is no guarantee of when the issue will be fully resolved. It’s important to understand that it’s not feasible for an MSP to guarantee resolution times for every type of issue across the board.
Key Contract Provisions
However, a well-crafted contract should still include provisions related to:
- System downtime thresholds
- Responsiveness
- Hours of operation
When evaluating an MSP, ask about their ticket volume and whether you have the ability to call and immediately speak with a technician when needed. At ASG, we prioritize answering client calls promptly and resolving issues on the spot, rather than requiring clients to submit a ticket and wait for a response. This approach allows us to handle 98% of tickets efficiently.
24/7 Support and Escalation Procedures
Additionally, the MSP should offer 24/7 support availability for any critical systems. To illustrate this point, we recently worked over a weekend to restore a client’s proprietary application database after a vendor error, ensuring they were operational by Monday morning. When discussing your needs with a potential MSP, they should be able to provide examples of how they have handled similar situations in the past.
Inquire about the MSP’s escalation procedures for unresolved issues. At ASG, we prioritize escalated tickets and aim to resolve them quickly. We maintain a low volume of escalated tickets, typically less than 10, despite supporting around 4,000 computers. This is a testament to the quality of our service desk and the expertise of our technicians. Be wary of MSPs where escalated tickets languish in a queue or take weeks to resolve.
Communication and Responsiveness
Effective communication is key in a managed IT services relationship. Many MSPs send automated reports, which can be helpful but may not provide significant value on their own. The true measure of a successful partnership is whether your staff feels comfortable calling the MSP, communicating their needs, and receiving prompt, satisfactory assistance. If your current IT provider is not responsive to your needs, it’s a major red flag that should not be ignored.
By carefully evaluating an MSP’s SLAs, support availability, escalation procedures, and communication practices, you can make an informed decision when choosing an IT service provider that will meet your organization’s unique needs and expectations.
Data Protection Protocols for IT Service Provider Evaluation
When you’re choosing an IT service provider or managed IT services, data protection should be at the top of your list. It’s not enough for your provider to just back up your data. They need to be doing quarterly test restores, and at ASG, we do them manually. Your backups are automatically tested every night to make sure they’re good, but a manual test should be done every quarter.
The Importance of Regular Backup Testing
You’d be surprised how many prospects we meet with who find out their IT providers aren’t testing backups quarterly, aren’t involving clients, and aren’t checking in regularly to make sure all the data is being captured. It’s one of the main reasons businesses end up switching providers.
We have a simple process in place:
- We check with you at least twice a year
- We have you sign a document confirming what we are and aren’t backing up
- We test your backups every single quarter, and you’re involved in the process
This way, you understand how long it would take to get your business up and running and can tie that to a financial impact.
Compliance Requirements for Data Protection
Backups and data protection are huge compliance items:
- ISO 27001 for information security management dictates quality control data and requires specific backup controls around all quality control data
- HIPAA compliance dictates it, especially for any personally identifiable information (PII)
- PCI DSS, NIST, and CMMC all have similar requirements
Your data needs to be encrypted at rest and in transit. It should be backed up with an offsite 3-2-1 backup copy. That means three copies of your data across two locations, with one being offline or immutable. No matter what happens, you can be recovered. The encryption should be tested at least annually, and most compliance frameworks have requirements around this testing that many MSPs don’t talk about.
Offsite Data Replication
Another thing to consider is that your data shouldn’t be stored locally or in a data center close to your business. It should be replicated across the country. Why? In case of a localized disaster, you can be virtualized in the cloud somewhere else and keep operating, even if it’s in a limited capacity. We protect all our clients in Connecticut, New York, and surrounding states this way.
Disaster Recovery Planning
The most important thing your IT provider needs to be able to do is back up your data and give you a solid disaster recovery plan. You’d be amazed how many clients at other MSPs don’t have a written disaster recovery plan. They might have written steps for recovery, but they don’t know what systems are important to their clients, in what order things should be recovered, who to call, and when to notify their insurance provider. All of this needs to be thoroughly documented, and we include it with all our plans.
These are just a few of the items you should be asking about when evaluating a new managed IT services provider. By making sure your prospective provider has strong data protection protocols in place, you can rest easy knowing your business’s critical data is secure and recoverable if disaster strikes.
Scalability in IT Service Provider Selection
When choosing an IT service provider, it’s essential to ask questions about how they can scale and adapt to your changing business needs. This is particularly important if your business engages in mergers and acquisitions, is rapidly growing, or even if it’s just growing at a steady 10% per year.
The Importance of Provider Growth
Many IT providers are small and have remained small over time, which is okay if they provide quality service to their clients. However, this usually indicates that they’re not growing and not retaining their client base as the businesses they serve expand.
Flexible Service Models
There are various models available when selecting an IT service provider in Connecticut:
- Pay-as-you-go options
- The ability to add or remove services
- Seamless integration of new technologies
At ASG Information Technologies, we offer a fully inclusive plan that scales downward as your business shrinks and upward as your business grows. Our company has grown from eight people to nearly 30 in just 10 years, which requires solid, well-defined processes that your IT provider should be able to discuss.
Comprehensive IT Process
What we provide is a comprehensive IT process. It’s not about the tools or even the technology itself, although it is a technology plan. It’s a robust IT process that guarantees IT results for a company.
Your provider should be an expert in how your business leverages technology, having conversations about cloud-hosted systems, what to keep on-premises versus offloading, and how to mitigate risk. We conduct ongoing risk assessments for all our clients, which is something most IT providers in the area do not do.
Evaluating Managed IT Services
When evaluating managed IT services, look for examples that demonstrate your provider is:
- Growing
- Has internal IT processes (ask to see some of them)
- Consists of experts who are well-run internally to be responsive when issues arise
They should be able to show you that they perform regular technology assessments of your environment, as a server’s setup can change over three to four years, requiring constant alignment, checking, and maintenance.
Your provider should present a strategic roadmap looking one to three years ahead, so you understand all your costs. This roadmap should incorporate not just what they’re responsible for but also your company’s technology, proprietary software, systems, and when everything should be updated and aged out.
Proactive and Scalable Service
There’s so much that needs to be done to offer a comprehensive IT department to clients. Your provider must be proactive about recommending upgrades, keeping you running, and constantly scaling and growing themselves.
To illustrate this point, one of our largest clients started with eight people and is now around 300. If ASG wasn’t growing as quickly as theirs, they might not be where they are today.
Partner with a Trusted IT Provider for Your Success
Your next IT service provider should align with both your current requirements and future growth plans. Our team brings deep industry knowledge, tested data protection methods, and a scalable approach to support businesses across Connecticut and New England.
Schedule a consultation to review your technology setup and learn how our managed IT services can improve your operations. Our partnership starts with understanding your goals. Reach out today to begin building your technology roadmap.
