Engaging with an MSP provides numerous benefits, including better productivity, increased security, and expertise. But there are certain things you can do on your side to make that partnership work even better for your business.
How to Create a Valuable Partnership with Your MSP
Once you engage and hire an MSP to support your IT operations, you’ve already taken the first step to increased productivity and maintenance. Good MSPs will supplement your business by proactively managing your systems, applying modern technology to protect data, and ensuring everything runs smoothly.
However, there are further steps you can take to build a formidable partnership that works even better on both sides – meaning you can maximise your IT output to boost your business’s performance. Here are some tactics and tips to help ensure you make the most of your MSP.
Share Your KPIs and Business Growth Plans
Good managed service providers should be agile and scale their service levels with your business requirements. To help them do this, share your growth plans and any goals and KPIs that you’re looking to achieve. In doing so, you’ll provide additional context for the MSP to tailor their package and better recommend the right solutions to support your IT systems.
Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions about your MSP – they’re there to help, so you need to be sure that they can support you in the right way to achieve your goals.
Make it Collaborative
The best partnerships are ones where both sides are working together towards a common goal. Once you’ve established the goals and overall targets with your IT provider, it’s important to align with them to ensure you’re getting the best value for your money.
Though the MSP will be responsible for part or all your IT systems, the most effective partnerships blossom when both provider and client have good, open lines of communication. You should be able to reach out to your MSP for expert advice and guidance, and they should be on hand to proactively offer their expertise and suggest better systems and processes.
Involve Them in Decision Making and Strategic Plans
When you’re making internal plans, it can feel like an insular thing you want to protect from the outside world. However, your IT provider will likely have the knowledge and experience to support you from a strategic perspective.
For example, if you’re undertaking a large-scale IT project, consult your MSP and ask for their advice on how they would approach it. You can also bounce ideas off your provider for other decisions including new software and system rollouts. The MSP will have experts with a range of specialisms, so it’s worth tapping into that valuable knowledge to ensure the best outcome for your business.
Trust Them to Keep You Connected and Secure
Don’t forget you’re hiring an IT support provider because of their expertise and the benefits they can bring to your business. For that to happen effectively, you need to be able to trust them, particularly when it comes to data protection and cyber security. You must have complete confidence that their systems, software, and processes will keep you protected.
Of course, that trust must be earned – through a reliable service. Once you start noticing increased periods of downtime or feel your MSP is dropping the ball, you might want to consider the relationship.
Make Sure They Can Scale to Suit Your Needs
As you grow, your company’s reliance on more advanced and reliable IT systems will increase. In these circumstances, you need to be sure that your MSP can scale its level of service to suit your growth.
For example, if you go on a hiring spree, is the MSP well-placed to increase its monitoring to cover the additional users and machines? Are they able to adapt quickly to your requirements?
Continually Review and Adapt the Relationship
Businesses change. People come and go, processes change, and systems become redundant. Your chosen IT provider, therefore, needs to be adaptable to your requirements. And there’s an onus on you to help navigate change by involving the provider and adapting the relationship to suit those needs.
When anything changes within your business, you need to review your partnerships, as the agreed levels of service or deliverables may need to be amended in line with the changes.
Value Their Expertise and Knowledge
A good MSP should be a trusted ally within your business. That’s because they’re experts within their field – often with specific specialisms in more niche areas of the IT industry. That’s a powerful thing for your business, as it provides you with immediate access to knowledge and insight that would otherwise be out of reach.
Ready to Build a Beneficial Partnership with an MSP You Can Trust?
Whether you are engaging with a provider to oversee your entire IT operation or looking for some tactical support to complement your existing IT team, an MSP can be a force for change within your company. What makes a good managed service provider is that they’re flexible, adaptable, and listen to your needs. But you can make that relationship even stronger and more beneficial by working with your support company to ensure you’re both moving in the same direction and working towards common goals.
Everything Tech has extensive experience providing IT support to small and medium-sized businesses, including disaster preparedness, data backup, and cyber security management. Contact us today or call 0161 826 2220 to see how we can help you.
