Prioritize: Your business is unique and therefore your requirements are unique. Your MSP should address that.

Best practice: There is always a right way and a wrong way, we always work on the right way

The CIA: The data triad is a requirement that all MSP should address

Education: front line of any organisation.

Ethics and responsibility: No matter what you do if you are not driven by the ethical requirements you will never take responsibility for your actions.

Be Prepared: Proactive not reactive. Be Prepared

Review and improve: Always check for better, improved ways of doing things

1. Not having a contract in place that supports both the managed service provider and you, the client.
2. Not understanding the requirements of the service level agreement (SLA) and what constitutes a breach.
3. Not getting one bill per month but getting billed for work that should have been part of the SLA.
4. The managed service provider uses unskilled and in training personnel on your site to save costs.
5. The managed service provider does not use an remote management and monitoring tool to change the support from reactive to proactive support.
6. The managed service provider does not deliver easy to understand reports and is available to discuss them any time in any forum.
7. Treating your staff and organisation as second class citizens.
8. Thinking that it is easy money when it is not. Managed service providers have to have the skills, expertise and knowledge to support your organisation in the correct way.    To do this they need to implement self repairing software, reporting and monitoring software and work outside normal working hours to lessen the impact of down time and regular maintenance.

When it comes to your business, it is unique.   There is no other business like yours and anyone who comes in contact with you and your business will understand that you are unique.

Because of this uniqueness there are 5 questions that you should ask your provider:

1. Can the managed service provider work within my unique capability—Every organisation has different ways of doing things. If a MSP is asking you to change to their way of doing things without taking into account the way you do business then that should be  a warning bell.
2. What security measures are they bringing to the table—The basic requirements of business security should be delivered under the MSP process. They should include  Firewall, patching and updates, AV, White listing, backups and Remote management and monitoring tools.
3. Do they have a number of staff to cover my requirements—You never want to be at the mercy of an organisation where only one staff member can fix a problem
4. Are they going to report to me and how regularly—Regular reporting is essential. Too much is always better than not enough.
5. Am I going to get the same support that everyone else gets or will it be unique—Your business support should be tailored to your way of doing business.

The problem for most SME’s, charities and NFP organisations is knowing when to ask for help.

Most organisation do not ask for help because they think it will cost them.

If you have a Service Level agreement with CareMIT we expect you to ask us questions.

The questions that keep you up at night are the same ones that we are concerned about and we have probably already done the research and got a handle on those new technologies that will disrupt your business.

Ask away!