What’s the transition to a managed IT services model going to be like? That’s the question that comes up next after you’ve decided that you need to do something different with IT, and managed services are the solution to your problems. Whether you’ve picked a provider or you’re still evaluating your short list, asking questions about what the transition to the new services will look like will help you to be prepared. The managed service provider (MSP) should have an established onboarding process that they follow to get clients started with services. The goal of onboarding is not just to […]

When you’ve decided that managed IT services are a good option for your business and you’re evaluating different companies, you need to understand what’s included and what’s not included in their monthly fee. Evaluating managed services provider (MSP) costs isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, so having questions to guide your conversation about what to expect as far as costs is imperative. Before we go any further, let’s identify a price range for managed IT services prices. In general, you can expect to pay between $75 and $250 per user per month so what you pay depends in large part on the […]

What if your IT manager resigned today? What if two or more of your internal IT team needed time off at the same time? What if maternity/paternity leave for multiple IT staff overlapped? What if everyone in the IT department got food poisoning from the takeout meal they shared? We’re getting a little melodramatic here but the point that we’re making is that when you have a small internal IT team, you’re just one situation away from big trouble, especially in a tight job market. How can you make sure that you’re always staffed even if something happens to pull […]

As a business leader, you might be hesitant to make a change with what you’re doing with IT because you don’t have the technical background needed to compare different managed IT service companies. If your goal is to augment your internal IT team, there will certainly be some technical questions that your IT manager will want answered. However, whether you’re looking for a co-managed or fully outsourced solution, what you, as an executive, really need to determine is: As you gather the information that will answer these two questions, you’ll be able to paint a picture of what it will […]