The businesses today survive and thrive on a far more connected digital world than ever before, thus need a reliable, resilient IT infrastructure. IT services are no longer a luxury; they are a requirement that is essential for your business to function. Can you even imagine? Each and every element of a modern, digitally powered enterprise depends on it. Be it ensuring seamless communication or having strong cybersecurity apparatus against ever-growing threats, technology has played an integral role in almost every aspect of modern business.

Because of that, companies today must have efficient IT support. Since it is both hard to manage and financially challenging to have an effective IT support system within a business infrastructure, the IT outsourcing market is set to reach a staggering US$591.20bn by 2025. Yet, most businesses out there have a common misconception; IT support services are only required when problems arise.

This could not be far from the truth; and we are going to debunk this myth and tell you how you can truly maximize the value of your IT support provider. From exploring key areas to understanding how to ensure a collaborative approach, all is discussed in actionable steps down below.

Let’s get started!

Understanding Your Business Needs

The process, towards ensuring you get the best out of your IT support provider, begins even before you engage with the provider itself. First things first, you need to understand your specific business needs. Only then can you ensure that the provider of your choice best aligns with the needs you have identified. This also stops you from overspending or going for unnecessary features that are not even a requirement for your business.

Here are some common areas of your IT structure to examine:

• Network Management: This includes the following: the design, implementation, maintenance, and security of your network infrastructure. So all the routers, switches, firewalls, and wireless access points come under this umbrella. Once you go through the network management, you will know where there are lapses in quality, which can then be a need or requirement when you go towards the IT support provider.
• Cybersecurity: One of the major concerns any business faces in today’s world is that of cyberthreats. You need to go through your current cybersecurity apparatus and understand what kind of IT support it needs. For instance, there are firewalls and antivirus software. But nowadays, new systems have also appeared like intrusion detection systems and vulnerability assessments too. Lastly, employees also need security awareness training.
• Cloud Services: If you are a digitally driven business, you will most likely have some kind of cloud computing as part of your IT infrastructure. IT support providers can help you ensure your cloud services perform to the best of their ability. But to ensure that, you first need to understand what your cloud needs are. Are you using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS)?
• Help Desk Support: Do you need your IT support provider to do the job of a help desk support? Their activities include providing timely and effective technical support to your employees. In this way, there is a system that ensures minimum downtime and productivity increases. Nowadays, they also provide on-site assistance and have a ticketing system that can manage requests.
• Data Backup and Recovery: If one of your business needs is to ensure safety and recoverability of your data, note that down! There is always a chance of a hardware failure, natural disasters and most commonly cyberattacks. In such cases, IT support providers have the ability to implement robust backup solutions and put in place a comprehensive disaster recovery plan too.

On one hand, it is important to ensure you understand and identify your IT business needs. On the other hand, you should not overspend and try to get every possible service out there. Stick to your needs and ensure you get the best possible provider for those services.

Establishing Clear Expectations and Communication

Just like you identified what your IT business needs are, you also need to define what you expect an IT support provider to provide you or achieve when you hire them. The key to that is to have open communication from the beginning, especially in the Service Level Agreement (SLA). This document should be treated as the cornerstone of this relationship because it is where you outline the following:

1. Responsibilities
2. Performance metrics
3. Communication protocols for both parties

What Should A Robust SLA Include?

• Service Scope: Each service provided should be outlined here in detail. Do not just list all the services but ensure that their scopes are also defined: their boundaries and if there are any exclusions.
• Response Times: How much time will you give the provider to respond to any query or problem? Different issue types may have varying time frames depending on their nature. Other things part of this section are separate response times for critical issues or urgent requests and routine inquiries.
• Resolution Times: You also need to establish a benchmark for performances that can help you manage expectations. In order to do that, you will give the service provider a target resolution time, which they will follow strictly and ensure that the issues are resolved within the given time frame.
• Escalation Procedures: Suppose an issue is not resolved within the agreed-upon timeframe, what will be the steps to deal with such a situation? This will also help you in ensuring the critical ones get more prompt attention.
• Communication Channels: What are your preferred methods of communication? i.e. phone, email, ticketing system, text. Also make sure to outline how frequently updates and reports can be taken from the provider.
• Performance Metrics: There are always key performance indicators (KPIs) that are well-defined and can be quantified. For example, metrics such as uptime, first-call resolution rate, and customer satisfaction will all determine the performance of the provider.
• Reporting and Review: The SLA should explicitly describe how often performance reports will be formatted and the frequency of review meetings. It gives you an opportunity to discuss performance and make the provider aware of where some tweaking is required in the work that they do.

Ensuring Open Communication

The SLA is a written agreement but working with the IT support provider goes beyond just the agreement. Hence, the communication between the two parties must be open and transparent at all times. So it means even if there is no discussion happening on technical issues, you must communicate your business goals, challenges you’re facing and what are the main priorities.

That’s the only way you’ll be able to build trust and avoid miscommunication and misunderstandings. To help you with this, you can work out a defined communication process which includes channels that can be used to submit requests, track progress and receive updates.

If you were to ensure your business priorities are aligned with the priorities of the IT support provider, you will have the best communication. It will not be a one-time event but an ongoing process so this alignment is critical to ensure long-term success.

Building the Environment of Collaborative Partnership

Your IT support provider is an extension of your in-house IT team and they must be treated in that way. In the past, businesses have falsely approached providers as vendors that only set them back in any advancement. The goal is to open up a lot of benefits with the technical support. So, a partnership approach based on open communication, mutual respect, and a common understanding of your business goals is essential.

Benefits of Treating the IT Support Provider as member of your team:

• The ownership and accountability are shared.
• The provider is encouraged to be more invested in your success.
• The more a provider is involved, the greater the chance of them anticipating your needs, offering more proactive solutions, and providing support that’s more tailored.

Integrating In-House IT Team with the IT Support Provider

Take this collaborative partnership a step further and integrate your in-house IT team with the IT support provider. Think about it: who has all the necessary knowledge of all the intricacies of your IT infrastructure? Your own IT team that deals with the infrastructure on a daily basis. If you were to put them together with the support provider, you will be able to combine the internal knowledge with experts who offer specialized solutions. Hence, there will be better problem-solving, more efficient knowledge transfer, and the entire IT strategy will become more robust over time.

But don’t go there before you establish the roles clearly. If there is no ambiguity, it should work fine because the entire decision-making mechanism is not residing with the internal, or the external, service provider. It is a team effort for all, and as a result, both sides are getting the required results with utmost ease.

Taking a Proactive Approach

What makes an IT support provider successful is their approach: it’s reactive versus proactive.

Here is a breakdown:

Proactive vs. Reactive

A Reactive approach is a break-fix model that works only when something is broken. On the other hand, a proactive approach is an effective representation that identifies issues before they arise and mitigate the problems before they cause harm.

Here are three key components of a proactive mindset:

1. Continuous monitoring
2. Regular maintenance
3. Strategic planning

They all work together to predict any potential problems and nip them in the bud before they can cause damage.

Benefits of Proactive Approach

• When issues are identified and resolved promptly, there is minimum downtime and productivity maximizes overtime.
• This system has regular security updates, security patching and performance optimization, ensuring continuous improvement.
• There is strategic guidance offered by a proactive system that can help you use technology to achieve long-term goals. For instance, such a system can identify your business needs and tell you which new technologies can provide the best solutions.
• The security posture is also improved.
• The business can work towards scalability and efficiency of the entire infrastructure.

Measuring Success, Maximizing ROI

The journey that started with defining clear expectations has now come to the other side where you must see whether those goals are met. The success of this IT support partnership must be measured; only then you can find out how to maximize the return on investment (ROI).

The key performance indicators, that had already been identified, should now tell you how successful this partnership was. Using those metrics, you can identify the areas of improvement and acknowledge your provider where they have done well. The idea is to connect IT support performance with overall business goals so you can demonstrate the value of investment.

Your end-result should have the following benefits:

• Minimal downtime
• Higher performance
• Robust cybersecurity

If these three metrics are successfully met, you will automatically see a stronger ROI for the entire business.

Constructive Feedback

The second part of measuring success is to identify the areas for improvement. Remember, IT support providers are not one-time vendors, they are in it for long-term success. So, at the end of a defined time, let them know their successes and where they have performed well.

Alongside that, you will provide constructive feedback. The area for improvement, whether technical or otherwise should be communicated in an open environment. When you recognize their efforts and provide constructive feedback, the level of trust and motivation for the external party increases.

Final Thoughts

The following 5 strategies are the foundation of how to get the best from your IT support provider. Just note that you need to define your business needs first, and once defined, go ahead and define what you expect from the selected IT support provider. When you are ready to start, we advise having a very active approach in the field and measuring success in solid metrics to make sure your ROI is maximized.

If you are looking for an IT support provider in Hong Kong and Singapore with over 20+ years of experience, FunctionEight is at your service. When it comes to establishing clear expectations, building collaboration and having a proactive strategy to IT support, we are ahead of the curve. So why settle for reactive IT support, contact us today and together let’s drive your business to its true potential.