Tips & Tricks
5 Things to Look for When Choosing a New IT Service Provider
There is no question that technology today is always changing at a rapid pace. When you are running a business it can get pretty stressful when you are trying to grow the business and stay on top of the necessary technology at the same time. Thankfully, there are plenty of options that can help take some stress off your shoulders. One of the most popular helpful options is outsourcing to an IT service provider. Looking for the right provider can be a pretty daunting task, how are you supposed to trust someone to keep your business’s technology running? Here are the top 5 things you should look for in a service provider that will help ease your mind.
1. Client Success is Their Top Priority
Many IT service providers will say they are client success focused but how can you tell? You should be able to determine if they are quickly by doing some research and contacting them. Ask them about their client success model. Any company who has a team in place will be gladly be willing to talk to you about their employees. Which brings me to my next topic
2. Their Employees
Great employees are what make a great company. Great IT service providers will follow that. They will have the best in class engineers on staff, sales people that actually care about the success of your company, and again a great client success department. For example, here at Thrive we have 80 amazing engineers on staff that work 24x7x365 to help keep our many clients’ companies running. We assign a client account manager and a technical account manager to each client to make sure if they have any problems they are fixed quickly. We focus on your IT problems so you can focus on what is most important to you, your business.
3. Look at the Company’s Track Record
How long has the company been in business? How much have they grown? Who do they work with? What is their client retention rate? These are important questions to ask. Great companies will be gladly willing to give you all the answers.
4. Products and Services
Obviously the most important thing to look at is their products and services. Are they just a reseller or can they offer services that will complement each other? Do they focus on one specific service like Cloud? Or do they offer many services including cyber security, disaster recover, vCIO, and networking? Look for a service provider that offers many different services so their employees can talk to you and your business needs and then present you with a custom solution that will best fit your needs.
5. Client Resources
Look at their website, can you find any client resources? Many services providers will have resources that you can use to educate yourself with. These can include a blog, case studies, breaking IT news and articles on their social media pages, up to date frequent blogs, and custom client portals.
Bottom line there are many different IT service providers out there that can help you depending on your IT needs. Hopefully this list will give you some starting points to go find the best fit for you. Here at Thrive we are more than happy to talk to you about your business and your IT concerns. Please feel free to contact us today with any questions you may have.