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A lot of IT service providers can talk the talk, tell you everything you want to hear and make you think they’re the one for you but when it comes down to it, they fail to understand and support your business needs.
Your success depends on the quality of your suppliers, so you need to be able to trust that when a problem comes up, it will be dealt with swiftly and doesn’t cause damage to your business.
Questions to ask about your current partner
It can be hard to see if you have a good or bad supplier so we’ve put together a few things to ask yourself to make sure your IT support provider is meeting your needs. If you find yourself relating to these signs, maybe its time to break up with your current supplier.
Who is your IT provider?
Can you answer that question without checking with a colleague or going through your emails? IT Support providers should feel like an extension of your team, if you find yourself wondering who yours are, or only ever contact them in an emergency, they are failing you.
At Netitude, we take pride in getting to know our clients and making sure we provide them with the best service possible. Our clients know they can come to us about any problems or questions they may have – big or small. They don’t waste time digging through emails to find our contact details, in fact, most our clients have us saved on speed dial – so when they have an issue or questions it is resolved as soon as possible.
What do they understand about your business?
When was the last time you met with your supplier when something wasn’t broken? Do you meet with a knowledgeable and experienced account manager on a regular basis, or do they only come to see you when they want to sell you something?
All Netitude fully managed account holders have a “virtual IT Director” assigned to their account. Regular meetings with your key stakeholders and taking the time to understand your business, how it works and what it’s aiming to do, enabling us to keep your IT systems aligned and in step with your business needs.
We understand that both business and technology are constantly evolving and you need to be prepared for future changes. Part of our fully managed service is helping to plan out your IT budget for the coming year, understanding the changes in your business and staying on top of the simple but necessary tasks such as timely and cost-effective workstation replacement plans.
We don’t pay commission on sales, so our account managers are not financially compensated for selling you the latest and greatest. They are motivated by providing your business with the right technology, the guidance to best take advantage of that technology and seeing your business succeed. This is a key part of delivering our mission, growth through technology.
When was the last time they helped you?
Can you think of the last time your IT Support suppliers helped you without someone logging a ticket? IT support isn’t just about fixing things that are broken, it should also be about enabling your business and users to use technology in the most effective way possible. If your users are left struggling with to use their technology as effectively as possible, or struggle to use Word or Excel, your business is losing productivity and wasting time.
Your supplier should have the ability to help your users with “how-to” tasks, spending time with your users to solve those little issues that might never get raised as a ticket, or helping design a “Standard Operating Procedure” to keep your whole business on the same page. This ensures your systems working effectively and moving forward with technology.
Our dedicated network administrators visit our clients each quarter, this time is not just spent auditing your systems but spending time with your team. We believe the relationship between our network administrators and your users is key to developing a great working relationship. With time spent on-site and in your business to help and advance your users having a huge benefit to efficiency and productivity.
Our clients also benefit from a full Microsoft Office 365 training platform as part of our service, delivered through our secure customer portal (BUZZ) with easy to follow video guides and exams, allowing you to track your team’s efforts and watch their skills grow as they work through our coursework. If you want to find out more about this service, check out this blog post: How to access free Microsoft training with Netitude
Why does the same thing keep failing?
There’s a never-ending list of reasons why IT systems fail, however, there is no reason the same thing should fail again and again. Your supplier should regularly review your ticket trends, specifically hunting for re-occurring issues, then address those issues with a permanent fix.
Suppliers should also be monitoring your entire system 24/7, their job should also include automatically raising tickets and resolving issues before you are even aware an issue was there. If these steps are being taken in the background, they should also be able to evidence this work.
Netitude carries out quarterly ticket trend analysis on all of our accounts, generating our own task lists specifically to deal with and eradicate re-occurring issues. We also have the top-of-the-line monitoring systems, with “self-healing” scripts written for each individual business and network need. This means, in some cases, we can automatically fix issues, which is faster than dispatching an engineer! All these actions are ticketed and available for reporting – our model works because of this work going on in the background, so we want to be able to show the hard work that goes into it too.
When your business stops because IT systems fail, that’s where the big bucks are spent. So stable, secure and robust IT systems and infrastructure that deliver silent and dependable IT is the goal. Less downtime, less damage to your business and less cost.
How did your IT Sevice provider do?
Did you know the answer to all these questions, or did you have to take a minute to think? If your current supplier isn’t checking all your boxes don’t be afraid to leave them for someone more suited and understanding to your needs. If you liked the sound of our service, we’d love to hear from you and discuss the advantages of fully managed IT support with Netitude.
