In a fast paced world with constantly changing and growing technology it’s easy to become overwhelmed, and ultimately complacent, when it comes to your IT provider. It’s becoming increasingly well known that IT plays a big part in not only maintaining a business but scaling it as well. It’s important that your IT provider not only earns and preserves your trust but also helps your business grow. With that said, are you truly happy with your IT provider, or do you expect more?
Earning and Building Trust
We all have certain expectations, whether it’s for an IT service provider or just your typical day-to-day interactions with clients and employees. Sometimes our expectations are not met and we lose trust in those we expected the most from. This often includes IT providers who don’t hold up their end of the bargain. A good IT provider will follow through on their promises to help businesses grow and scale their IT environment. This in-turn builds and maintains trust between the provider and client.
Communication
Piggy backing on the trust factor is the notion of solid communication. Communication is everything is business. Everyone needs to be on the same page for things to work at their best. It’s important that your IT provider communicates with you and helps you understand your IT needs. Poor providers will essentially go “rogue” and do things based on what they believe is easiest for them. A great IT provider will communicate with a client and be concerned with the client’s needs more than their own.
Expertise In Industry
IT is not a “one size fits all” idea. It’s not a baseball cap or a pair or socks. A great IT provider will be knowledgeable and have demonstrated success in your industry. An IT provider who focuses primarily on Enterprise clients may not take a small business client as seriously, or be in tune with their specific needs. Conversely, a provider who works primarily with non-profits may not be as familiar with the needs of an e-commerce business. This is not to say that IT providers can’t have expertise in multiple areas, as many do, but it’s important to know what an IT provider does best. If your IT provider isn’t focused on you as a client or isn’t familiar with your specific business needs they may not be the best fit for your organization.
Proper Application Development & Management
Does your IT provider work with you to develop functional, custom-built solutions that meet your business requirements? Does your IT provider ultimately support and manage these applications accordingly? Many IT providers promise a lot when it comes to application development but fall short of expectations. Whether this includes mishandled management of existing applications or poor execution of application development a trustworthy IT provider will not only understand your application needs but essentially “walk you through” the process. Applications including back-office and web applications are often an extremely important aspect of any business – find an IT provider that stresses the importance of application development and has a concrete strategy for development and implementation.
Change Procedures
Most IT providers have some sort of change procedure in place, but don’t actually follow these procedures. This aspect could fall under a number of similar topics we’ve discussed such as trust and communication as well. A change procedure is there for a reason, and it outlines the requirement change processes. If an IT provider does not follow the proper procedures it could end up costing the client or become harmful to a client’s production environment. IT providers that properly follow change procedures are one’s you can ultimately trust.
There many things to consider when evaluating your current IT provider or vetting a new potential provider. The things we’ve discussed above are just a few of those important aspects. In order to keep your business operating at its best, it’s important to have a trusted provider handling your IT needs efficiently and effectively.