Finding the Right MSP for your

Business Needs

 

We recently shared Nick Griggs’s blog about the value a Managed Service Provider (MSP) can bring to your business. An MSP offers proactive monitoring and management of your environment, taking the stress away from your IT department. Emily Henke shares in this blog that when selecting an MSP, find one that has a team that can handle all aspects of your IT needs, including end user support, cybersecurity, network support, cloud, and application management.

With so many choices, how do you pick the right one for your business? Let’s take a look at the criteria you can use when selecting the right MSP for your business needs:

1. Define your MSP Requirements/Support Needs: Evaluate the services that an MSP provides and align those services with your business’s needs. Some MSP’s specialize in help desk and network support while others are niche to cloud management and cybersecurity. Check with them to understand their support hours as well as if they offer on-call or 24/7 support. Better yet, confirm if after-hours support is a specialized rate. If you aren’t sure which one would work best, check out our blog on the difference between Help Desk and Managed Services.
2. Cultural Fit: Does the MSP culturally align with your business’s cultural values. Ask what their employee retention rate is. If it seems as though there is turnover on a regular basis, ask why. Tech is a hard industry, MSP’s that value their employees also value their clients. Your team should feel as though they have familiarity with the MSP and they are an extension of your business.
3. Certifications/Compliance: Ensure that the MSP’s you are evaluating have certifications in the areas you are specifically looking for out-sourced help with. If you need Microsoft expertise, ask if they are a Microsoft partner and what types of certifications their engineers have. Ask if their engineers are actively training and being given the time to sit for additional certifications. Find out if they have any certifications or compliance requirements, such as SOC compliance, that can set them apart from their competition.
4. Cost and Value: Look at the MSP’s service offerings and the costs associated with their services carefully. When you are comparing services across many MSP’s, you may think that the services are apples-to-apples, but that is not always the case. Ask what toolsets they are using to support their clients; most MSP’s will be very up-front with their tools. Find out what metrics and reports they will provide you throughout the year that demonstrates their value.
5. Service Level Agreement (SLA): Determine how they measure SLA, but more specifically, how they will measure it for your organization. Ask if they offer different response/resolve times for different priority requests and how they prioritize requests. Dive into specifics on how they will contact you across the different priority requests so that you can ensure they are truly going to support your organization within your expectations.
6. Cybersecurity Training and Awareness: Many MSP’s have added cybersecurity to their services offering. You want to confirm that they have a team that is dedicated for cyber incidents. Find out how many are on that team, what their hours are and ask what type of cyber incidents their team has experience with. Get an example of an Incident Response report so you can see what the output from that team will look like, but more importantly, ask what their support methodology is for cyber incidents.
7. References: Ask for client references, specifically clients that have been with that MSP across various stages of their existence. You want to understand from a client perspective how they have evolved and brought new initiatives to the table. Ask for a client reference that has been onboarded within the last year and take the time to find out how that client’s onboarding experience was and if they would select that MSP again.

Remember, this is not just about selecting the right MSP, it is about selecting an extension of your organization that will meet and strive to exceed your expectations. You want to make sure the MSP you select is consistently showing their value to your organization and earning your business.

If you are looking for a Managed Services Provider, our team would love to schedule time to discuss how we can help! Follow this link to contact us!

About the Contributor

Emily Henke is a Senior Account Manager at Secure Data Technologies. She brings over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, specializing in client success and strategic planning. She understands the importance of establishing a partnership between the MSP and client.