What should I consider when choosing an IT support provider?

Are you considering getting IT support for your business?  It can be difficult to carry out the research and determine who would work best for your business with so many sources of information to consider online.  So this week we want to give you 4 key areas to focus your research and questions on for your short list of IT support providers.  Let’s look at each area in turn.

Experience

Do they have experience in the IT industry?  This is an important question to determine the reliability of the IT support you will receive.  If they have good experience in the IT support industry, they will be better equipped to provide you with reliable and timely response to IT issues.

Do they have experience with your industry?  How can they demonstrate this experience to you?  Do they have references and recommendations?  It is important that your IT support provider has experience in any software packages you use as a critical part of your business, and if they have current or previous experience of working with companies in your industry this can help with resolving specific issues that arise with your software packages.  Without this knowledge, it could increase the time taken to troubleshoot such issues.

Knowledge

Does the company and their engineers have the current qualifications that you would expect or desire from an IT support provider?  Ask if they regularly invest in their engineers training and that they have the required qualifications to ensure they can provide the services that you need.  Ask about the skills available with their organisation to get an understanding of the breadth and depth of the knowledge of the engineers that will be working on your IT.  Do they have the knowledge and expertise on all the services you require them to look after?  But sometimes it’s not just about the technology, what about your local area?  Are they aware of any challenges that make the area your business is based in unique? The team here at MJD certainly know that the North of Scotland has a variety of different challenges based on the rural and remote locations of some of our clients and this needs to be factored into their IT requirements to ensure that the solutions work for their circumstances.

Products and Services

What relationships do they have with the best IT services for things such as Cyber Security, anti-virus, remote management, back-up, Microsoft offerings etc?  Do they have dedicated account managers and partnerships with these services and tools that they will provide to you to help you run your business efficiently?  Once they provide this information, ask yourself if this is the standard of products and services you want or require for your business.

Contract Options

What support contracts do they offer and what are their response times for each offering?  You need to know going into any support contract what response time to expect for the service you are purchasing from them.  This will help you to both have a more successful and low stress relationship going forward, allowing for the chance at a very productive business using IT to your advantage.

If you want to ask MJD about any of these questions please don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team here at MJD.  We’d be more than happy to help.