Almost half of businesses estimate that one hour of downtime causes a loss of $10,000 or more. To combat the issue of productivity and monetary losses, hiring an IT professional is necessary.
Yet, if you hire managed services providers without the best qualifications, they won’t be much help to your business. If you want to reap the benefits of having an IT team, you need to know what to look for during the hiring process.
Read on to learn five key factors for choosing managed services providers.
1. Availability
Your computer network is running at all hours of the day, so your managed services providers should as well. When choosing these IT professionals, ensure that they are available 24/7.
2. Quick Response Time
A managed service provider should be able to respond fast to your problems and needs. An IT provider may attempt to forward your calls to a call center instead of answering you directly.
When you need IT support, you want the head of your team to respond promptly. Ask for a guaranteed response time. You can often get this in writing within the contract.
3. Annual Budget Planning
The best managed IT support companies will benefit your business in the short term and long term. This means they’ll sit down with you to help you plan for technological needs in the future.
As your company grows, your needs and budget will change. Make sure you have IT support that can grow with you. You can learn a lot about the expertise of a professional by discussing yearly planning.
4. Disaster Recovery Planning
Managed services providers should do all they can to prevent a disaster from happening. This includes having the tools needed to create a strategy against cybercrime.
However, some disasters can happen no matter how many prevention methods you take. For example, outages, weather disasters, and vandalism are problems your business might experience.
Even if these possibilities are rare, the IT company you hire must have a recovery plan in place that can save your data and reputation.
A common technique that can help with recovery is daily backups. Automatic and consistent backups are the first line of defense after a disaster.
5. Proactive Maintenance
To avoid problems down the line, an IT professional will make sure you run and update all technology when needed. Waiting to fix a problem when technology is not working is not a great way to stay productive.
Your vendor should be available for onsite support when needed. This is why finding a provider within your locality is important to receiving the best service.
Managed Services Providers Are a Necessity to Business
If you are researching how to choose managed services providers, you likely understand the importance of IT for business. The right IT hire can help your business grow and nip problems in the bud before they occur.
When considering the above five factors, you’ll be able to find the right local IT company for your business.
Don’t let your company be a victim, check out our other posts about cybersecurity and more.
