Choosing an IT provider – 12 questions you should be asking

There can’t be many businesses in this day and age that aren’t at least partly reliant on IT to run smoothly. But for many of us, having internal IT resource isn’t feasible – so instead, we outsource it. But it’s important to pick the right provider – one that will help you achieve your business goals, allow you to operate smoothly and help you protect your systems and data from cyber attacks.

So if you’re thinking of outsourcing your IT support provision, the following are a few questions you should be asking yourself AND the prospective IT company:

1. Does the prospective IT company take their own cyber security seriously?

You should ask if they have staff qualified or experienced in cyber security matters, and how they ensure staff are kept up to date with current cyber security best practices.

Does the company undergo any annual certifications such Cyber Essentials/Cyber Essentials Plus? And if not, what is their reasoning for not doing so?

2. How can you help us with our cyber security?

Not all IT Companies are cyber security companies!

Most (if not all) will be willing to perform the monthly security updates to prevent the majority of malicious attacks that come from not having the latest security updates installed, but that is only part of the service they should be offering. Any prospective IT company should be able to demonstrate their ability to make your IT systems as secure as possible.

3. Can you provide me with some reference companies to speak to?

Any company should be more than willing to provide references, you would expect a builder to be able to do it so why not an IT company?

There is no better measure of a prospective company’s ability to deliver a service than through referrals, so always ask for several references.

If a company is not willing to provide references, you should ask yourself – why not?

If they can provide references, it will instantly give you confidence in them. If you choose to speak to the reference companies, there are a few potential questions you may want to ask:

• Do they deliver on what they promised?
• Are they easy to get hold of?
• Do they respond in a timely manner?
• Do they let you know what’s happening with your reported issues?
• Would you use them again?

4. Can you provide different levels of support provision?

IT support companies should offer you a choice of service options to suit different budgets and IT requirements. The following are common service options:

• PAYG (Pay As You Go) support, this is usually an hourly rate or a fixed price for each element of work. Depending on your requirements this can be a much more expensive option over a prolonged period.
• Break-Fix support, usually the cost varies depending on how quickly you need an issue resolving. This option will usually be charged on an hourly basis but can also be offered on a fixed-price contract.
• Managed service support, usually, the support company will actively manage your various IT systems and to be available immediately if things go wrong. This usually involves signing a contract for a set period of time.

5. Does signing a contract tie me in for a specific period of time?

The majority of IT support companies will expect you to sign contracts with a minimum time commitment or long cancellation periods. If they don’t provide a good service, you will want the ability to stop using them, so look for providers with a short minimum term and short cancellation period.

6. Tell me about your partnership with other IT companies?

IT support companies may not be able to provide every service you need, instead they may outsource some elements (Such as cyber security consultation) to another company that they have partnered with.

This should not be seen as a negative but quite the opposite, they have acknowledged that certain areas are not in their realm of experience and therefore get help from companies that do have the required skills etc.

7. What are your response times?

Any IT support company should be able to offer a response time if you have an issue with your IT infrastructure, this response time will vary depending on your contracted level of support.

Remember that a ‘response time’ is how long it will take them to respond, not how long it will take them to fix an issue. If you want issues resolved in a certain timescale, this needs to be discussed as part of your contract but the quicker you want something fixing the more it will cost you. Some parts of your IT environment may be business critical and need fixing ASAP while other are not as crucial and can be fixed over a longer period of time.

8. What other services do you offer?

Does the prospective IT support company only help when problems occur or do they offer assistance with things such as application support and training?

9. Can you supply and fix hardware as well as general IT support?

If you have procured all of your computer equipment already, it is important to understand if your IT support company can replace any faulty parts and/or supply complete systems. It may also be preferable that the IT support company can take over the support of any existing hardware instead of having to use multiple suppliers, if this is something you want, you should make sure that the IT support company is experienced and is approved by the hardware manufacturer to support your systems.

10. What will you not support?

This is probably one of the most important questions you need to ask, many companies assume that outsourcing their IT support will mean everything is supported by the IT company.

This is invariably not the case, for many reasons such as:

• The equipment may be out of date and no longer supported by the manufacturer
• The equipment may belong to another third party (e.g. network equipment from your Internet Service Provider)
• Equipment that your IT support company does not have the knowledge to support

The unsupported items may be able to be fixed by the IT support company but are not covered by the contract and may mean additional charges are levied to you. For example, if one of your servers suffers a catastrophic failure and needs to be replaced, will the installation of the new server be covered by the contract, or will there be additional charges for it?

Asking what the support contract includes may not necessarily bring out this detail.

11. Do you provide remote management and monitoring?

Many IT support companies still operate an on-site break-fix service only, with many organisations having moved to remote working because of the COVID19 pandemic it is important to select an IT support provider that has remote management capabilities and can monitor your dispersed IT environment remotely.

12. How and where do you backup my data?

One area many companies just assume will be covered are system backups – but every organisation will have different requirements when it comes to backing up data. You may be happy to have a weekly backup of your most important data, while other organisations may want their databases backed up every 15 minutes. Any prospective IT company should be able to undertake an audit of your systems to understand what data you have and how often it should be backed up.

You should always ask a prospective IT company how and where they backup your data, they may store the backups on your own infrastructure or may use their own systems (or those in the cloud).

A key question to ask is – how is this secured? Any backup systems and/or media must be adequately segregated from the rest of your environment to protect it from being compromised in the event of a malicious attack. Many companies have fallen victim to ransomware attacks which have encrypted not only their live data but also their backup files meaning they have no way of recovering their systems. Your prospective IT company must be able to prove to you that your backups will be secured and always available in your hour of need.

Want to find out more?

We’d be happy to talk to you about choosing the right IT provider. We know some really good suppliers locally and beyond that we’d be more than happy to recommend. Just get in touch using the contact form below.