What are Managed IT Services? A Definition to Evaluate Providers

What You Need to Ask

When choosing an IT managed service company, it is important to know their managed services definition to determine if the company you are considering will exchange your monthly fee for fully managed services or a package to which they have applied a "managed services" label. Knowledge of different managed services definitions and having some questions to ask during your decision-making process will help you choose the provider that will get you the best results from their work.

Managed or Merely Outsourced IT?

When you hear the term IT managed services, it is sometimes presented as just one form of outsourcing. This could be the case when you are offered standalone services such as backup, cloud or firewall solutions. Services might even package together to look like you are getting all of your IT bases covered for one monthly fee. If all you are getting is the deployment of services and not a whole IT department, then you aren’t looking at fully managed services.

Proactive IT or Reactive Break-fix?

Beware that your costs will jump when something unforeseen occurs if a company you are considering refers to a set number of monthly hours as "managed services." Having a fixed budget for your IT costs is very beneficial, but if you are getting a pool of hours for your fixed monthly fee, then you aren’t looking at fully managed IT services.

IT strategy and management with a proactive approach to guide service delivery cost more if they spend more time on your behalf to ensure that you get your expected deliverable. Reactive support on its own won’t improve your IT, and you will likely spend more, too.

Read: 5 Questions to Ask When You Are Evaluating an IT Managed Service Company

IT Strategy or Project Consulting?

So many choices are available when deciding how best to support your business operations with technology. IT consultants may be highly knowledgeable about your hardware, software and network options and the combinations that work best together, but what seems like the right direction could lead you astray.

Discussions about your IT investments and future technology needs should begin with a thorough understanding of your business objectives, not just your business processes. Managed IT service providers that bring IT leadership to your team and facilitate IT strategy with a proven process that will help technology play an integral role in achieving your goals.

How to Evaluate Managed IT Service Providers

Your discussions with potential IT managed service providers allow you to determine which company offers proactive IT strategy and management and which is just packaging services, labor and consulting. Whatever questions you ask, the provider that is going to bring your company the most business value is probably going to be the one that focuses the discussion on you and what you want to accomplish.

It only takes a 30-minute discussion to explore how you can get better IT results. Contact us at 855-767-2571 to schedule a discovery meeting.