MSP: Why is a MSP Different from an Outsourced IT Company?
This week, we look at how a MSP can help you in your daily IT administration; recover from a data disaster; and create a multi-layered cyber security approach.
Now, How and Why does an MSP want to differentiate itself from a traditional IT provider?
First things first, you need to understand that there are many ways to approach IT.
1. Break-Fix
This is the most common type of IT that is still being employed by companies, and favored because of its perceived good value.
Look at it this way, no one wants to study, put in so much work in school and then end up spending several days figuring out what is in a company’s IT environment.
More often than not, this is the largest concern and a large cause of manual labor.
And of course you can enlist the help of and IT company but it will cost your company money.
And if you do not employ their services, you can have your non-IT colleagues help with the tagging, but everyone will end up looking like that husky at the end of the day.
Just defeated. And sad.
The is also the same theory when a company is throwing good money away for hours that could be on the verge of expiry, or not put to good use – like resolving your company’s IT issues.
Clients on this break-fix model often do not calculate the amount of monetary loss during a IT disaster when they are non-operational; and the copious amounts of energy, stress, and time that will be required to restore similar data into their company database.
2. Preventive
This is another method favored by companies short on time, money, and manpower for IT.
They are expecting a quicker, and cheaper turnaround time compared to the break-fix method.
However, this method also borrows from the break-fix model.
Instead of waiting for things to break down, the outsourced IT company will often try to guess what will happen to the devices under their care.
But when devices do actually break, they will return to the mindset that the device needs to be fixed, or replaced.
This is also where the IT company will earn an opportunity to gain more profits when the client makes a new purchase of IT equipment.
What’s new with this method is a service-level agreement (SLA).
Clients do not realise that this is just another facade.
When an outsourced IT company tells a client that they have a SLA, it refers to the response time that they have for your company.
Say for example, one server goes down and your agreed SLA is 4 hours. It means that the outsourced IT company will respond to your request within 4 hours.
What the clients are not reading is how much time they will take to resolve the issue. To put it simply:
Response time =/= Resolution time.
As with the break-fix model, there is no actual plan devised for situations when it happens.
And yes, more often than not, the client calls the IT company for help.
With the break-fix and preventive methods, the outsourced IT company has no stakes in maintaining a clear picture of their client’s assets and helping them make the most of their IT investments.
More often than not, more time and money is spent on resolving those issues.