How to Choose the Right IT Support Partner for Your Business
Make sure you trust the company. It’s vital that you feel comfortable with the person or company you are dealing with. After all they are going to have your company’s data in their hands. You need to trust your IT company as equally you need to trust your accountant. So does the person or company have a reputation, are they talking gibberish or making sense, do you feel they are trustable. These are some question to consider, but in most cases trust comes down to gut feeling.
Testimonials. You can’t beat another satisfied customer as a way of measuring the performance of a prospective IT support company. Don’t just take the word of their website testimonials – of course they’ll say great things. Pick up the phone to some customers they already supply (good companies will offer this as a matter of course).
Look for support skills. It’s important to see whether the IT service company you are dealing with has the right level of skills for IT Support. You could ask how many years’ experience the IT Staff have or who are the IT service company’s existing customers and how long have they been with them. Also are the people working on your IT fully supported by senior staff and do they have access to helpful support resources that may save time if a serious IT problem occurs. For example Microsoft have professional support training and qualifications as well as technical forums and libraries of valuable troubleshooting information.
Look for a track record of experiences, knowledge and expertise to help advise your business to be more efficient and effective and help increase your business or save costs. There are many IT companies in the Western Cape but few with the experience in providing a sound business advise on how IT can provide a higher up time and reduce costs.
Price. Of course the price is important too. Cheapest may sound attractive but it may end up costing more later if jobs have not been done properly the first time due to unqualified personnel.
Record Keeping. Does an engineer turn up and sit in the corner of the office surfing the web or are they pro-actively checking your IT and keeping records? A good IT company will keep various records of your IT environment to help with planning and support.
Consider if you want Preventative maintenance or Reactive maintenance. Preventative maintenance (such as IT Outsourcing) involves routinely doing health checks and updating your IT like patch management and non- supported software. If this is done properly the need for reactive maintenance decreases. Reactive maintenance is a case of only attending to a problem when something goes wrong.
For more information, on how we can help your business give us a call 086 1113 848
