When you put your IT services into the hands of an IT consultant or managed services provider, you’re putting your business in their hands. This is a big risk, but if you manage your managed services right, you can get big benefits. Working with an IT consulting firm can let you bring in skills you don’t have onsite and free up your own staff to work on important business projects. Here’s what you need to do to make sure you get the results you need when working with an IT services provider.

Making IT Consulting or Managed Services Succeed

Before you even start the vendor selection process, make sure you know exactly what you hope to gain from the relationship. This is a business question first, then a technical one. You need to know what the business needs from its IT and where your internal team is having trouble meeting those needs. You also need to know whether the goal of bringing in a vendor is to solve current problems or implement a brand new strategy to set you up for future success.

Once you understand the high-level objective of the services contract, you can start evaluating IT services providers. Technical capability is a big part of the decision, along with cost, but along with those criteria you should also consider the vendor’s reputation. Look for a vendor who’s well established, with a long track record and references who will vouch for their capability.

Have a well-defined contract that spells out the details of the services to be provided and how they’re to be delivered, but also build in flexibility. Your business and technology change, and you don’t want to be locked in with a vendor who can’t adapt to new requirements.

Finally, don’t surrender control. Even if your IT services are delivered by a vendor, they’re still your IT services and need to be subject to your information security policies. Make sure you have a governance strategy that will allow you to review the vendor’s activities to ensure you remain in compliance. In addition to monitoring compliance, you should collect and assess metrics that let you measure the vendor’s performance. You’ll want to make sure they’re meeting their contract commitments and that you’re getting the results you expected.

Learn More About IT Services

Prescient Solutions has been providing IT consulting services and IT managed services to clients in Chicago and Schaumburg for more than 20 years. Download our guides to learn more about hiring an IT consulting firm or what managed services can do for you, or contact us to learn about the Prescient Solutions approach to delivering IT services that help your business overcome your technology challenges.