Learn Why Switching IT Support Providers Can Make a Positive Difference to Your Business
IT is a vital component of most modern businesses. Because it is so important, many businesses fear the disruption that they assume comes with any effort to change providers. However, if you plan your handover correctly, switching IT support providers can make a positive difference to your business. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your switchover goes as smoothly as possible.
Be Clear About Why You Are Doing This
Switching the providers of your corporate IT support isn’t the kind of thing that you should do just for the sake of it. instead, it is important that you are always conscious of exactly why you are moving to a new provider and what was wrong with the old one. If all you know is that your last provider wasn’t up to scratch, but you aren’t able to articulate exactly what it is about them that you found inadequate, don’t begin your search for a replacement until you are clear about why you need them.
If you aren’t completely clear on why it is that you are looking for a new provider, it will be difficult to assess whether they are a better choice than your existing arrangements. The wrong IT support provider will make your life much more difficult in a number of different ways. If the situation is bad enough to warrant seeking a new supplier, then you want to be certain that the new supplier you choose won’t present you with the exact same issues.
Scout Out Your Potential Choices
Whenever you are making an important decision in business, you should be trying to do so with as much prior knowledge as possible. There are several reasons why you might find yourself looking to switch providers for your business’s IT support services. If the split is amicable and you and your previous providers part ways on good terms, they might be able to help you find a suitable replacement.
Unfortunately, business breakups are rarely so amicable. If you find yourself needing to find a new service provider of your own volition, it will help you a lot if you are able to standardise the process and criteria that you use to identify and evaluate potential choices.
Don’t Dismiss Documentation
In tech support, there are few things as important as documentation. Good IT support providers will include documentation that enables your workers to solve as many of their own problems as is practically possible. This means that the provider will be able to keep as many resources as possible free to help your workers with more complex issues, rather than spending most of their time helping you solve basic issues.
You can make the lives of your workers much easier by ensuring that you maintain useful and up-to-date documentation for all of your systems and processes. This will have the added benefit of ensuring that you aren’t clogging up your support lines with problems that workers should be able to solve for themselves.
Plan Your Handover
If you want the handover from one provider to another to be as smooth as possible, you need to allocate a member of your team to oversee the handover. This should be someone with superb communications skills who you can trust to relay information accurately between the old team and the new team. Your designated facilitator should also be someone you can trust to iron out any kinks that might arise in the handover.
Switching over to a new provider can be a real headache when key services are involved. If you are at the helm of a large business that depends on its IT support staff day-in-day-out, any downtime or interruptions in service can have serious repercussions for your business. Whenever you switch suppliers from one provider to another, it is vital that you do so with a planned approach. As long as you plan your handover right and make sure that you choose the right provider, it should bring nothing but benefits to your business.
Thinking about switching IT support provider but unsure where to start? Contact NECL today for an impartial, no obligation chat with an IT expert!