A managed service provider (MSP) can provide significant value to your organization. An increasing number of businesses and organizations are turning to MSPs to address their IT needs, including:

• Security: The constant battle against cyber attacks, data protection and retention, disaster recovery and more involves constant oversight and research that most IT departments simply don’t have the resources for.
• Expertise: A lack of it often leads to spending too much on IT that’s not the right fit at the right time—and doesn’t end up paying for itself.
• Management: The complexity of managing vendors, networks, multiple locations and users becomes too much to handle.

But each MSP’s process is unique. At Liberty Technology, we’ve found these five factors contribute to the most successful MSP partnerships:

• Scope: Find an MSP that caters to your type and size organization. The best MSPs offer preventive maintenance along with troubleshooting. Look for a friendly, knowledgeable staff that gladly assists with any questions.
• Onboarding: Onboarding is considered one of the main best practices for MSPs. Prepare to offer documentation—network diagrams, vendor contacts, internal IT policies, backup recovery and incident response plans, etc. Next, the MSP should begin installing their management and security software to your systems to help make a more in-depth assessment.
• Proposals: The MSP will recommend improvements to your IT environment to make it more compliant, standardized, secure, efficient, etc. Once any changes are implemented, the onboarding team will then hand off your communications to a client success team to handle day-to-day issues and host regular meetings.
• Education: Choose an MSP that is absolutely passionate about education—approaching the latest technology with a healthy mix of enthusiasm and skepticism. And they should fully test new solutions before ever presenting them to you.
• Communication: Your client success team should schedule regular meetings to ensure things are being handled to your satisfaction and in accordance with your agreement. They should provide security reports and demonstrate how they are creating value. Finally, they should regularly check progress against your roadmap and budget.

In short, the right MSP remains focused on solutions that deliver ROI and free up your internal resources. At Liberty Technology, delivering best-in-class service happens naturally through proven practices that yield positive results.