Searching For A New Miami IT Support Company?
Bringing on an MSP (Managed Service Provider) to support various IT infrastructure needs can be beneficial to Miami businesses with limited IT resources. They immediately expand their technical knowledge base and gain support for processes crucial to supporting ongoing business needs.
What decision-makers want to avoid is hiring an MSP that ends up being wrong for their company. That’s why it’s important to ask the right questions when you’re interviewing any Miami IT support company as a potential partner. Any IT provider you’re considering for supporting your organization should be capable of answering the following seven questions to your satisfaction.
1. What Are Your Specialties?
It’s essential that you understand from the start precisely what the MSP has the experience and capacity to handle. If you’re looking for one that specializes in security, they should be able to give comprehensive answers when going items like their security-as-a-service offerings or the processes followed when providing remote firewall support.
Listen for clear details in each response. What you don’t want to do is make the mistake of bringing on an IT partner who can’t fill the needs of your organization. You can’t afford to waste time and money on an MSP who can’t deliver on their promises.
2. What Other Companies Have You Serviced?
One good way of cutting through the hype in any pitch is by finding out how satisfied other businesses are with an MSP’s services. Get candid when asking them if they’ve had complaints, whether the companies would have good things to say about their experience with the provider, and how long they’re usually able to maintain contracts.
Another thing you should ask about is their ability to maintain quality support for multiple companies. You don’t want to have issues cropping up and not receiving timely support because your MSP has maxed out their current staff trying to meet various commitments.
Every business must start somewhere. You may end up entertaining meetings with start-up IT providers with little to no established history. Gear your questions towards delving into the experience of the owners and their backers. While the company may be brand new, the industry knowledge of those running the MSP may be worth the trade-off.
3. How Quickly Do You Respond to Service Calls?
Inquire about whether they have a 24/7 help desk available when you run into problems. Provide them with specific scenarios your company often runs into and how long it would take them to start working on the issue. What you don’t want is having a server crash at 9:00 pm and not getting a response from your MSP until the next morning.
4. What Pricing Model Do You Use?
Ask any potential MSP about the pricing models they make available to clients. Some like to charge a flat fee for each device supported on your network or for each user with access. Clarify whether you would have to pay extra for add-on services like security or data back-up.
They might also provide you with an all-you-can-eat model where you pay a monthly fee in exchange for the MSP providing you with all their available services. The IT provider should be able to clearly explain how their billing works and provide estimates for costs based on the services you require.
5. Are You Experienced in Handling Hybrid Cloud Environments?
If your company’s IT infrastructure relies on a mix of on-site and cloud platforms, your MSP must have a solid background navigating both environments. They need to understand the ins and outs of passing data back and forth between the applications and data sources housed on both platforms.
Have the IT provider give you specific examples of how they’ve handled hybrid cloud environments for past and current clients. Get into details like handling load balancing, expanding storage when needed, and reinforcing servers. You can’t afford to lose data because of your MSP’s lack of experience.
6. Is an Uptime Guarantee Part of Your SLA?
Ask about the percentage of time your services are guaranteed to remain online. Don’t be satisfied with answers like 99 or even 99.9 percent. You need to have the MSP break down what those numbers entail.
A 99 percent uptime guarantee still translates to 24 hours of downtime throughout 100 days. You also need to clarify if unscheduled downtime, where problems are caught and fixed before crashes occur, count towards this period.
What happens if those hours occur during critical periods? Health insurance companies dealing with critical patient data need to think about what would happen if providers couldn’t access HIPAA data critical in making medical and health coverage decisions.
7. How Do You Go About Hiring New Employees?
Since you’ll be entering what could be a long-term partnership with an MSP, you should understand their process of bringing on the workers who could end up supporting your IT needs. Go over things like how they conduct background checks to the background they look for when hiring for different technology areas. An IT provider who doesn’t make sound hiring decisions will end up affecting the quality of service your company receives.
Let Funcshun Support Be Your Miami IT Support Company
You want a Miami IT support company who isn’t afraid to answer any tough questions put to them. Funcshun provides a wide variety of managed services to Miami organizations including server monitoring, data backup, and 24/7 support.