To begin understanding how to choose an IT Managed Services Provider, you need to understand what the heck an MSP is in the first place.
Simply put, an MSP is an I.T. Consulting company that charges you a monthly fee for your tech support. If you try to purchase software nowadays you’ll see that most everything gets billed this way and I.T. companies are no exception,
Ok, so an MSP is a monthly IT billing service, now how do you go about finding a good IT Managed Services Provider?
Ok, so here is you’re MSP Checklist:
Longevity – Has the MSP been around for a while?
If you’re going to trust a company to handle your IT security, your means of production and all your data then you should make sure they’ve been around the block and have the track record to prove it. To find out about an MSP, pop on over to BBB or Clutch.co and check their founding date.
Now it is important to note that BBB and other sites merely ask you for your founding date so this information can be made up so the way to verify if company is telling the truth is to pop over to https://web.archive.org and pop in their web address and see if they have in fact been online for that long.
Customer Satisfaction – Can the MSP provide positive customer references?
When bad news gets out it is extremely hard to expunge from the internet.
So, to get a fair idea of a managed service provider’s reputation you should check out their standing on Clutch.co, Google Business, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp and then also a run a Google search to see what other tidbits come out of the woodwork.
Now, a lot of these reviews are added at the behest of the business so they will typically be positive.
To make sure they aren’t just cherry-picking their clients for positive reviews, ask the prospective MSP for the references from 5 clients that are similar to you. If they can find 5 clients that have similar business operations and all of those clients beam about the MSP then they probably are doing a decent job
Support Staff – Does the MSP have a strong and friendly staff?
Don’t be fooled by certification levels or staff sizes, certifications are nice to plaster on a website but do little to prove experience, troubleshooting skills, and competency.
Anyone can cram a test and get a certification, but not everyone can boast about having 10, 20 or even 30 years of technical support experience under their belt.
You want a support staff that has experience managing businesses like yours and whose staff is strong top to bottom.
An MSP will always send over their smartest people during the intro meetings but when you call for support, you don’t get that Tier 3 person, you will usually get their Tier 1 person. That person does not have a strong grasp of your network and is apt to do just as much harm as good.
It’s important to have someone at the MSP that is personally responsible and invested in your network so that things don’t slip through the cracks.
Here are the key questions to ask your prospective MSP:
- How large is their staff is
- How many are Tier 1 versus Tier 2 or 3
- On average, how many years’ experience do their techs have
- Am I going to get put in a queue when I need help or can I call someone direct
- Will I have a designated account tech
- Who is he and what’s his background and story
- Has that tech worked with your technology before
- How long has this person been with the company (turnover is high at MSP’s)
- If they are not around, then what happens
You need to grill them on their support people because they are the most important part of this equation.
There are A LOT of lousy tech people out there who bandy about buzzwords and talk a big game so make sure you’re getting someone with a story that adds up because a lousy MSP tech can do an untold amount of damage to your business and it’s workflow
Availability – What is the MSP’s SLA and how quickly will they resolve your issues?
Location is a factor but not as much as it used to be. You still want to know that techs are close when it comes to situations that require on-site assistance but you probably don’t need to make that a key buying point.
Find out what their SLA is and what the expectation is for response time on tickets, emergencies and for on-site arrival.
Most support is done remotely so you will want to make sure that they respond quickly to your calls and helpdesk tickets, that they have the staff in place to get to it quick and that a tech can be available quickly in the case of a major network failure.
Cost – How much do they charge and what are you getting charged for it?
Now the big one, COST!
MSP’s will bill you all over the place and offer all different types of plans and protections and modules so it can be hard to compare one MSP’s services to another.
Is their Gold package better than the competitions Platinum package!?
What you need to ask the MSP is what plan do you recommend and how much will that cost? Have them break it down as well, how much per computer, per network devices, per cloud system, etc.
Let them pick the plan that gives you what you need and then you then you can price shop. Before you sign-off you should also ask if you get Anti-Virus with this, Spam Filtering, Cloud Backups, Unlimited hours of support, patching and alerting, afterhours and weekend support, and any other requisites that may be important to your support.
Kaseya, a major vendor in the MSP space, did a large survey and found that MSP’s can range from $20-$150 per endpoint with the majority being under $100 per user or per device each month.
Those my friends, are the key items you need to address when picking an MSP Service Provider for your business.
