Partnering up with an adequately equipped business IT management company can significantly improve a small business’s overall efficiency and security, while simultaneously decreasing annual IT expenses. However, successful collaboration between the IT management service and the client company is an essential requirement for that. Next, we will discuss a few points that can be crucial for facilitating effective collaboration between a business and its managed IT solutions provider.
Table of Contents
Clarity of Expectations: Set Things Straight
Collaboration issues often stem from misunderstandings related to false expectations. To avoid such situations, the two following aspects should be clarified by each party first and well before the two get into any kind of contractual agreement:
- What the business needs from their business IT solutions provider.
- The type and scale of IT services that the business IT manager can deliver.
Ideally, the range and scale of business IT solutions provided to a client should comprehensively cover all of their IT requirements. Even if complete coverage is not an option, the management services on offer should at least be able to cover a majority of the client’s business IT requirements.
Client Cooperation: Be Ready and Willing to Cooperate
Whether it’s in-house or external, IT services cannot be provided in the best possible way unless the corporate culture inside the client company encourages full collaboration. It is not uncommon to find two different sections of the same company acting as two loosely connected entities. While that is bad for business in general, it can have an exceptionally negative impact on a managed IT service provider’s ability to serve. When there is little cohesion between the internal departments, the chances of seeing smooth collaboration between the various departments and an external IT service manager will be even lower.
All departments within a company are ultimately connected with each other, be it directly or indirectly. However, Information Technology (IT) is the only branch that is directly connected with each and every one of the other wings. Any company that needs IT management does not have a branch that can be held as being exempt from that connection. This fact should be clarified, and cooperation should be ensured through company policy that encourages smooth collaboration between the IT department/management service and all its other branches.
Unification of IT: Keep the Number of IT Partners to a Minimum
As mentioned previously, the ideal business IT solutions provider is a company that’s quite comprehensive in both scale and range of services they offer. However, larger, more varied businesses may still need to work with more than just one IT service provider at times to meet all their needs. If and when that is an unavoidable situation, it is still best to keep the number of IT vendors to a minimum.
This is recommended primarily to keep confidential company information from getting out, but that’s not all. The more external parties a company works with, the more difficult collaboration will become. Too many of them can not just create a potential security breach, but they can also lead to holdups.
There is no way to ensure that multiple different IT service providers will work in effective collaboration with each other. Enforcing company policies on multiple third-party alliances is not just problematic, it may at times be impossible as well.
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