Why should my business take a managed contract?

Why should my business take a managed contract

?

First off your business should only take out an IT Support contract if it is right for your business. So what that means to you as a business owner is that you need to weigh up the pro's and con's for your firm. From our side the reasons for a contract are obvious:

Regular payments allowing for business planning.

Easier to sell as a package.

Have more access to clients systems with monitoring tools.

Easier to calculate profitability of a client to our business.

Get clients to join firms that provide us with commission

Better understanding of client setup to make for quicker repairs

Monitoring so we can schedule work easier

Yes I actually put number five in and will come back to that in a short while. So from a clients perspective what do they actually gain from a contract? Well a lot more than the managed services provider I'd say! The main benefit that a client business usually sees is financial planning. Simply put, if the I.T. system is well maintained and you have hardware warranty from a major vendor, you know exactly where your I.T. costs are going to be over a three or a five year period. There will always be costs outside the box, like you may need to replace a print server, but these are low value items under the 100 mark which are usually easily budgeted for. A good firm would get you procurve switches with lifetime warranties on for example.

A typical example is when we have an member of staff working through the night to get your server back up and you knowing it's not costing you by the hour. I.E. The firm isn't making money from your systems being broke, it's actually costing them to have a technician on site at that time. Benefits that are usually highlighted down the line include time saving, your critical staff aren't putting out fires or panicking about how much it's going to cost to get someone out. They have clear contracted times that says they must of had a response in a particular period for a particular issue. This lets you concentrate on working on the business rather than in it (thanks Alan for providing that last one)

Another service that helps the business vendor management... Hands up who has had to deal with BT and wish they hadn't? A contract that includes vendor management means someone else takes care of this issue for you from start to finish and keeps you updated but not so much that it affects your actual work. You should be out doing sales or helping a customer not stuck in some transfer loop between departments trying to ask when your phone system or broadband is going to be back online This brings me back to point five. Vendor management when done right means not only a commission for the firm but also if done right means high level or director level contacts within a firm to escalate an issue. An example being we can ring an account manager and be put through to highly qualified engineer at an ISP that a typical business wouldn't have access too. This means we can describe the problem in the right way that they can fix it without having to go through the "have you turned it off and on again? Is the light green". Who has time for all that when trying to run a business or if there supporting the issue?

A good firm will understand your business and what your needs are and what is really critical to your business. If we happen to get a commission we always make sure the firm providing the commission is charging the same rate it would any normal customer and sometime we demand discounts for our clients. Other times we simply pass business between each other. However we only recommend people we would use ourselves or firms our customers have been happy with for a long period of time. Another not so apparent benefit is shared risk among the providers client base. If one client gets a virus the chances are after its fixed we'll know how it got in and can deploy a fix to all of our other clients to prevent it happening. The same goes for hardware and software so a standard deployment can save hours of time for the people doing the fixing and the people running their business. The top and bottom of this is I could go on forever on the benefits and your best to call in with your specific needs but some of you want to know why not to get a contract.

The main reason not to get a contract is if you don't know what your finances are going to be like from month to month. If your finances are like this then click the Alan link up top he can really help! Another good reason is if your a small firm, any less than four computers and a server and I don't personally think it's worth your while to take on the financial commitment unless you need to free up more time in your business. Your not sure if you can trust external firms with your data, hey it's a reason and can be proved valid sometimes. A recent watchdog report on computer repair shops including some major ones showed them looking at personal details and even trying to get into their bank accounts.

A lot of professional firms like ourselves are disgusted that this goes on but it's the reality of how things are unfortunately. If you can't trust the firms your working with you should get shot. At the end of the day you should pick what's right for your company and a firm who you feel comfortable with and think is capable of doing the job. I'd like you to choose my firm of course but that might not be practical other than remote support if you're in say Australia!

Taken from http://www.computerfirst.org/itsupportblogre-posted by the orginal poster.

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