Managed IT Services Lodi City

2. Get all your stakeholders together and agree on your needs, wants, and budget

This may well be the hardest part of the entire selection process, but it is an utterly indispensable one. Transferring your IT infrastructure to the care of a managed IT services provider will usually save you time, money, and frustration – over the long term. Over the short term, you will have the work and expense of organizing a migration and you may need to upgrade your systems first so that they meet the managed IT services partner’s standards.

You, therefore, want to do your level best to pick a managed IT services partner in Lodi who will be capable of taking care of your needs (and preferably your wants as well) for at least the next five years, if not the next ten. For this to happen, you need to be clear about what they are, and getting all of this hammered out right at the start of the proceedings can make life a whole lot easier later on.

Make sure you are really strict about defining needs (non-negotiables) and wants (negotiables). Listing a want as a need or a need as a want can lead to you either paying more than you needed to for your standard service or having to find money to pay for something you didn’t realize you actually needed. Once you’re sure you have everything in the right category, prioritize your wants and give them a rank or score.

3. When setting your budget remember to allow funds for projects and break/fix work

Remember that managed services companies offer to cover predictable tasks for a fixed fee. Their service explicitly excludes ad hoc tasks such as projects (including upgrades) or break/fix work, even if the issue is identified through their management service. They will either hand these back to you for you to have your own IT team fix (or hand over to an IT support partner in Lodi) or offer to do them as an add-on service at extra cost. In either case, you will need extra funds and/or insurance to be able to pay for it.

This might, therefore, be a good time to think through any project you are likely to implement in the short- to medium-term and hence how much IT support you are likely to need and how much this is likely to cost. You can then add on some extra for break/fix work (and potentially consider insurance for this, especially for cybersecurity-related issues).

4. Remember you need to know about the company itself as well as the services it offers

Most of the selection process is going to focus on “hard” criteria. Essentially, you’re probably going to spend the bulk of your time looking for companies that have the skills you need at a price you can afford. This is a crucial part of the process and it’s important to look thoroughly at all relevant details right up to and including the proposed final contract.

In particular, you’ll want to check that any proposed contract is written under California law and that it specifies that any disputes will be settled by the courts in California. This is almost guaranteed to be the case if you use a managed IT services partner in Lodi (or at least near Lodi), but if you use an out-of-state (or even out-of-country) provider, then, similarly, it’s almost guaranteed that the contract will specify that their local law applies and that any disputes between you will be settled by their local courts.

If you’d like to speak to an experienced IT managed services partner in Lodi, please click here now to contact Aperio.IT.

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