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Home » Feed » Managed IT Services » 10 Tips: Choosing the Right IT Provider

10 Tips: Choosing the Right IT Provider

January 26, 2020 By Blake Leave a Comment

Let’s face it- technology is a fickle beast, and finding the right IT provider is essential to the stability, security and sanity of almost any business. Left to themselves, most business owners find themselves resorting to trial-and-error.

Hiring and firing different providers will often make a bigger mess out of things than before.

Whether you already have an IT provider or are in the market for one, here is our list of 10 Tips for Choosing the Right Technology Provider:

1. Availability

Networks never sleep, and neither should your IT support. 

Stay away from providers who make you feel like you’re putting them out by calling after hours. Choose a company that takes pride in delivering top-tier customer support, letting you know they are available to respond and react to alerts and threats 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

2. Response Time

Quick response times are important. When searching for a company that can meet your business needs, be sure to test how eager they are to assist. How long does it take them to respond to an email? Return a call? A text? How about respond to a service call?

Avoid impersonal providers that forward calls to call centers, and ask if they provide a maximum response time.

3. On-Site Support

Remote access is essential to resolving issues quickly in more than one place at a time, but don’t discount the need to have your techs close by in case something goes wrong.

Using a local IT company ensures that help is never too far away.

4. Employee Help-Desk Support

It’s no secret that computers can be frustrating. And nothing works slower than a disgruntled employee, frustrated with the lack of attention and resources available for making their job easier. On the other hand, providing access to tech support keeps employees happier and productivity higher.

Make sure your IT provider is able to deliver fast answers and utilize remote access to resolve issues quickly.

5. Comprehensive Service Menu

Your IT company is only as strong as the services it provides. Armed with the right tools, managing networks, workstations and servers becomes a largely automated system of checks, scans, reports and alerts.

Here are the services we don’t think you can live without:

  • a managed antivirus service to stay on top of threat detection and removal
  • web protection to block employees from known malicious sites
  • a patch management system for keeping systems up-to-date,
  • automated cloud backup services to ensure your data is safe in case of disaster,
  • and risk assessment scanning to detect sensitive data, such as credit card or social security numbers.

6. Disaster Recovery Planning

Are you prepared for the worst? Your IT provider should be.

Weather disasters, theft, vandalism and fire are just a few threats to critical business data. With this in mind, your chosen provider must be able to assess infrastructure needs and lay out a continuity plan to protect your data in case of any event.

7. Daily Backups and Cloud Services

Further expounding on the previous item, the first step in disaster prevention planning is implementing an automated backup solution. Daily backups will keep files from getting deleted or lost over time.

Backing up to local storage only is not ideal. By utilizing cloud services, data is backed up to a safe, off-site storage location. And we have 7 world-wide data centers to provide maximum redundancy and availability.

8. Security Testing and Monitoring

Automated checks and security scans are essential to helping protect your network from cyber-criminals and hackers. A good IT provider will have a layered security model in place that maximizes threat detection and minimizes threat exposure.

Can your IT provider assess the financial liability of your network? Are there checks and alerts in place to make sure essential tasks such as antivirus and backup are completing successfully?

With Sentry, we are able to receive and respond to alerts via our proprietary app, and it’s fully integrated with remote access.

9. Proactive Maintenance

Your IT company shouldn’t sit back waiting for something to break.

Keeping security patches up-to-date for both the operating system and essential applications is essential to minimizing threat exposure.

In addition, regular maintenance keeps your workstations and servers running like new, day in and day out.

10. Annual IT Budget Planning

Our final tip is to choose a provider that cares about you and your business enough to help you plan for success.

A quality IT company will be eager to assess your business needs over the long-run, helping you save money and improve workplace efficiency. Forward-thinking providers will also help you stay on top of technologies that will help your company grow.

Conclusion

Choosing an IT provider is no easy task, and we strongly urge businesses to take a proactive approach. Asking questions and interviewing multiple providers will go a long way toward finding the right fit for your IT needs.

Filed Under: Managed IT Services Tagged With: 10 Best, Managed Services, security, Small Business

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Great quality work and very fast!
I've been working with Blake on my new business venture. He has put in a lot of time and effort to make my webpage attractive and informative. I am in Oklahoma and it is nice to just call him and be responds quickly. Don't know what I'd do without him
Quick turnaround on my laptop.
I have a computer that I got that was wiped clean and every body in waco couldn't fix it or wanted to much money to fix. I took it to this place and he updated all the drivers, now it works really fast and works now. I definitely recommend if you have computer problems take it here.
I had a MacBook Pro that needed some repairs and struggled to find a place in Waco. Blake was very easy to get in contact with and quickly looked at my computer. The problem was more complex than what he could do but knew the person who could and was willing to send the computer and everything for me. Highly recommend reaching out to him if you have a problem with your device.
Thanks for all your help Blake , I will be recommending you to family and friends.
Me and my daughter needed a lot of things done to get us back up and running with our computers. Blake had to make several trips to get it done plus take one computer to his shop. He never complained and was always friendly. He even gave my grandson a little computer where he could play educational games and watch movies which he loves. He is very thoughtful and professional and very knowledgeable. We appreciate all his hard work. I would definitely recommend hus services to anyone. Ty Blake!

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