When a business searches for an MSP (Managed Service provider), it is common for price to become the primary factor in the decision. While pricing matters, there are a few other aspects that are often overlooked. Without considering these, an MSP that fits your budget may be incompatible with the long-term needs of your business.
We've compiled a list of questions you can ask to rank providers against your business's goals.
Ask for the size ranges of their customers and whom they are most comfortable working with. An MSP that mostly serves businesses with 1000+ employees may have a difficult time navigating the constraints of a 5-person shop.
Alternatively, an MSP accustomed to smaller clients may struggle to keep up with your company's growth rate. For example, if you plan to double your company size in a given year, are they able to grow with you?
Our recommendation: Look for a provider who can support your employee count and is comfortable with the long-term support needs of your business. This might take a little more planning on your side, but it helps avoid finding out the hard way down the road.
This question might be one of the fastest ways to separate your MSP options.
Some providers route every call offshore to a shared call center. When a system goes down, you quickly call for help; a ticket is logged, and you'll hang up wondering if your request is actually being worked on. Often, these call centers work for many companies at a time and are measured on how many tickets they close. This tends to shift their focus to ticket volume metrics instead of root cause investigations that explain how an outage occurred.
Other MSPs put you in touch with a more local tech who will address the problem immediately and thoroughly, restoring your downed service. Often, this model investigates the causes to ensure the outage does not return.
Our recommendation: Access to friendly and dedicated technicians is an invaluable business advantage. When a system fails, you want an empathetic and helpful technician who will invest the time to get you back up and running. This is why MNS Group staffs local technicians who meet our high expectations for customer service.
Every MSP has Tier 1 support. What matters is how quickly a bigger problem moves to a higher tier. Ask how many Tiers your candidate MSP has, how escalation is triggered, and how long it typically takes to get to resolution. A good MSP will have some data around these statistics.
Our recommendation: A good answer will explain the time targets it takes to move from Tier 1, Tier 2, to Tier 3 and includes Service Level Agreements (SLAs) upon request.
Let's face it, some outages happen after everyone has gone home for the evening. Employees return to their desk with their morning cup of coffee to find a system stopped functioning hours before they clocked in. Their hopes of a productive start to the day fade fast as they figure out what to do next.
For a proactive MSP, most of these can be monitored and caught before anyone notices. Ask your MSP what they monitor (servers, networks, endpoints, email, etc.) and who responds off hours.
Our recommendation: Look for a provider who monitors your systems around the clock and has a clear plan for off-hours response. Ideally, the problem is resolved before your team gets in, and a summary is waiting in your inbox.
This may be a bit dependent upon the first question, but it is always good to know what long-term strategy a provider brings to the table. A reactive MSP gets things working after an outage. A proactive MSP will identify upgrades to budget for, security policies to implement, and new opportunities with the ever-evolving need for cybersecurity.
If you have internal strategists for the long-term work, maybe a more reactive provider works for you. If, however, you want to focus on the day-to-day, a strategic MSP will handle the big things and help move you towards a more robust and secure future state.
Choose the option that best fits your needs.
Our recommendation: Aside from tech and security upgrades, MNS Group offers cutting-edge services, like Local AI to help businesses automate repetitive processes and reduce complexity. Another benefit we provide customers is access to training for your employees to learn how to navigate new and increasing cyber threats.
Many MSPs will set up your firewall, turn on MFA, and call it done. But compliance is not a one-time project. Policies need regular reviews, evidence has to be collected, and controls tend to drift as employees and software change.
An MSP offering CaaS works with your existing IT staff to make sure your business's compliance needs are continually met. This is a game-changing option if your business works in the Defense Industrial Base where regular audits and assessments are recurring.
Our recommendation: Consider your business's ongoing compliance needs and whether CaaS is something you would need down the road. If this is in your future, it might make sense to begin with a provider who can graft you into that level of service rather than shop for a new provider.
Of course, this list is not exhaustive, so feel free to reach out to our team to get more information on the details of MNS Group's MSP/MSSP services.