What’s the difference between an A-grade and B-grade IT provider?
Over the last ten years that we’ve been in the IT business, we’ve noticed that there are five key areas that distinguish the A-grade players from the rest of the pack.
If you’re questioning the service and reliability of your IT provider, continue reading to learn whether it’s time to start looking for alternative providers.
1. Systems are patched
Do you get warnings that your anti-virus software is out of date?
A-grade providers proactively patch your systems and keep them up to date to ensure you are never left vulnerable to virus attacks.
By proactively monitoring threats and addressing them through patches and updates, your IT provider can ensure your systems are safe and secure.
If your provider fails to notify you and protect your systems, you should be worried.
What will happen if a virus attacks your network because your anti-virus software is out of date? Are you ok with being left vulnerable for a week until your IT provider implements the patches?
2. Quarterly strategy meetings drive additional value
Are your quarterly business meetings with your IT provider valuable or a waste of time? Do you have them at all?
A-grade IT providers use these meetings to provide strategic advice to help you plan for the future. IT planning is crucial to ensuring you can take advantage of new technologies.
For example, there’s been a lot of interest surrounding Microsoft’s new Power BI tool. This tool is enabling businesses - big and small - to visualise their data in new ways so they can make better decisions. Furthermore products like SharePoint as an intranet and business productivity tool are becoming more common.
Has your IT provider mentioned Power BI or SharePoint? If your provider fails to help you plan for the future and use IT as an enabler for growth, you could be using a B-grade provider and not getting the most from your technology.
3. Problems are fixed the first time
Do your IT problems keep recurring over and over again?
IT problems are part and parcel of all IT support and IT maintenance, but recurring problems are unacceptable.
A-grade IT providers have teams with experience that can professionally handle all kinds of IT problems. By using their experience, they can fix problems the first time.
B-grade providers that let recurring problems happen are really hurting your productivity.
For example, if you have a new employee who needs her email set up, you expect it to be done correctly in time for her first day at work. Imagine if that was done incorrectly and your new employee couldn’t get started on her first day. This sets back your whole onboarding process by a full day. How much is that lost time worth to you?
If you have to keep going back to your provider to fix problems, you’re wasting valuable time and affecting your business’ operations. Find an A-grade provider that you are confident can do the job right the first time.
4. Do they practice ITSM?
Otherwise known as “IT Service Management”, ITSM is the best practice service delivery framework used worldwide to deliver the best IT service experience. Principles that stem from ITSM include incident management, problem management (root cause analysis), change management and knowledge management. These all have specific processes designed to deliver a consistent, reliable outcome.
A-grade providers use a mix of people AND processes to plan, deliver and operate your IT services. This end-to-end approach ensures that your entire network is well managed and operating as efficiently as possible.
B-grade providers often just rely on people. They’ll fix IT problems when they happen, but if a key person leaves, the knowledge of your organisation may leave with them. Maybe their clients will have unnecessary performance problems or downtime because they do not practice effective change management. Or in another situation, problems of the same kind will keep occurring because they do not have effective problem management processes.
5. Monthly reports arrive on time
Do your IT reports arrive on time every month?
A-grade providers show you they are delivering increased efficiencies through their reporting. The reports should come with a summary or commentary that gives you insight into how they are delivering the outcomes as outlined in your contract.
Transparency is important because you need to know what you’re getting for your money.
For example, most IT providers provide an SLA (Service Level Agreement). A-grade providers report on this metric each month to show you they are meeting their contractual requirements.
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