10 things your managed IT provider should be doing · 2019-08-07 · 10 things your managed IT...
Transcript of 10 things your managed IT provider should be doing · 2019-08-07 · 10 things your managed IT...
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
10 things your managed IT provider should be doing
www.mintivo.co.ukMintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology
Using a Managed IT Service provider (MSP) can bring huge
benefits to your business, however making sure they are
constantly delivering value, being pro-active and growing
with you can be challenging.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
We’ve compiled a list of 10 things that we find are essential
to businesses but are often not being delivered or not being
delivered effectively by Managed Service Providers.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Delivering an IT Steering Group
A MSP should be meeting with your management team
regularly to inform the IT strategy and discuss what is
possible, what is common and what are key opportunities that
technology can enable for your business, a MSP is uniquely
placed for this, with in-depth experience of your business
coupled with wider industry knowledge. This is sometimes
referred to as having a Virtual CIO (vCIO).
1.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Having an agreed SLA
Working to an SLA is essential, firstly so you can ensure that
you are getting the service and speed your business needs but
also so that you can measure the performance of your MSP. Be
careful with ‘the 9’s’ though: a guaranteed 99.9% uptime still
means that for almost 9 hours a year your systems could be
down, whereas 99.99% uptime is less than an hour.
2.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
24/7 x 365 Monitoring
Businesses don’t work 9-5 anymore, your MSP should be
monitoring critical metrics in your systems 24/7 to ensure
everything is up and working when you need it. Make sure
that your SLA matches your business requirements.
3.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Having a proactive approach
When was the last time your IT provider contacted you with
suggestions for your business that didn’t involve you buying
more kit? Your MSP should be able to provide unique insights
in to your business processes with a technology focus to
streamline, automate and improve how you do business.
Any new technology suggestions should be supported with a
business case and a clear ROI.
4.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Asset Management
Do you know all the IT equipment your business owns, you
probably could find the details on some of it, but is it all still in
use? Has it been recycled? An MSP should be tracking every
IT asset in your business including the serial number, full
specification and warranty expiration dates.
5.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
On-site as well as remote support
Remote support has come a long way in the past few years
with more and more capabilities being added, not to mention
the overall improvements in bandwidth that would often be
an issue. There are sometimes when you absolutely need an
engineer on-site, not only for issues where a physical repair or
local access is required but also to meet staff and understand
your business even better.
6.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Cyber SecurityArguably the most important one on the list, Your MSP is key
to keeping your business secure, they should be leading the
conversation on Cyber Security and implementing changes,
updates, processes and systems to make sure that you stay
safe, your staff should be receiving regular training and
firmware and operating system updates should be installed
quickly and efficiently at least monthly. Cyber Essentials is a
great starting point.
7.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
BackupsYour MSP should be backing up your files, folders, emails,
applications and servers, just because it’s ‘cloud’ doesn’t mean
it doesn’t need a backup. This should be tested regularly, and
the results shared with you. If you are still being asked to
take USB drives (or even worse, tapes) offsite each day, then
you need a more modern solution. Not only should your MSP
be managing your backups but helping you with an entire
Disaster Recovery plan (which is tested regularly!)
8.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Managing updates
Microsoft release patches on the second Tuesday of each
month (Patch Tuesday). These updates should be installed on
all workstations and servers as soon as possible, the same goes
for updates to MAC OSX, application updates and firmware
updates which should all be monitored by your MSP and
installed promptly (during times for agreed change).
9.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
Using a process-driven helpdesk service
The helpdesk is much more than just a place to raise tickets.
Ensuring that the helpdesk is efficient, and tickets raised
can be escalated and reported on is vital to measuring the
effectiveness of an MSP. ITIL is the most widely recognised
and used framework which is a complete methodology which
focuses on best practices in IT service management.
10.
Mintivo: Inspiring businesses through technology www.mintivo.co.uk
So if your IT provider is not doing these things, then you need
to talk to them.
Alternatively if you would like to talk to us about how we can
help your business with all it’s IT needs - then please do get in
touch today.
www.mintivo.co.uk
03300 88 33 10