Are You Considering Managed Services ? - What You Should Know and What your Service Provider Should Know

On April 7, 2009, I published an article titled, "Are You Considering Managed Print Services? - What You Should Know and What your Service Provider Should Know."

Today, July, 2020, I replaced each mention of "MPS" and "managed print services" with "Managed IT Services", just to see if the content would still be relevant.

What do you think?

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Managed Services is still being defined - or is it?

I am a firm believer in "the best advice is the advice you ask for...", please don't give me any advice - unless I ask.

I extend the courtesy to you if you're not asking for advice and don't want to know my opinion, skip this article.

But if you are a prospective Managed IT Services client, and you're just a bit curious as to how to go about choosing a provider, read on.

Introducing, Greg's Top 10 Must-Know's before engaging in a MANAGED IT SERVICES assessment.

Imagine, you're sitting across the table from a Managed IT Services representative. He or she seems to know a great deal about printing and output and supplies.

After he gives his 5-minute canned intro, pull out the yellow pad with these questions written down, hopefully, you have left plenty of room for his responses.

Let's begin:

1. How do you (the client) define MANAGED IT SERVICES? Have your prospective provider define MANAGED IT SERVICES.

2. What is his Process? Leave it at that, let him further define your question. You want to see the detail of his process if he has one.

3. Tell me about your assessment. Get the gist of the assessment, the mechanics. You are trying to see if the proposal is the assessment - is that all he's got.

4. Clearly define your goals of a MANAGED IT SERVICES engagement and have him respond to them. This means you need to actually think before you meet with the provider. You do not need to have solid goals, just a direction.

5. What goals does your prospective MANAGED IT SERVICES provider have? Is his goal to ultimately replace all your existing equipment or supply source(s) with his?

6. How important is the assessment? Again, is the assessment the only tool in the shed? 

7. How many units have the prospective MANAGED IT SERVICES provider assessed in the last 6 months? This is simple and the numbers really don't matter, it's how he answers that matters. Does he make excuses, or does he make wild claims?

8. How many units does the MANAGED IT SERVICES provider currently manage? How? Same as above.

9. What percentage of savings has the prospective MANAGED IT SERVICES provider achieved with clients and from what areas of cost? This is a great one, don't let him get away with quoting Gartner or All or InfoTrend or even Photizo, make him get specific. Again, the numbers don't matter as much as how he responds.

10. What was the Core business of your provider before MANAGED IT SERVICES? The best question. This will tell you where he is going with your account and exactly how much infrastructure he has to support your fleet.

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Some generalities and points to observe -

Does he use the word "partner" or "vendor"?

Does he say he has the cheapest program around?

What does he say he cannot do?

Where did he learn about MANAGED IT SERVICES?

What does he know about IT issues like power consumption and cooling?

As the captain of the Titanic said, "...this is just tip of the iceberg..." 

Each of the ten points above can be expanded into even deeper discussions - would you like to learn more?