5 Basic Services Your IT Company Should Be Doing for You

When looking for an IT company to work with, you should understand precisely what it is that you’re looking for from them. Modern IT services will, on average, go well beyond the simple provisions of fixing any errors that your team might encounter. But here are five basic services you should expect from them.

Provide Quick Customer Service

While IT services should go well beyond this, there is no denying that the heart of what they do should involve responding quickly to your needs. IT problems are rarely something that you can wait on for too long, so you need to make sure you’re choosing a company that’s attentive to your needs.

Provide a “Runbook”

A runbook is effectively a list of tasks and processes that are put together for the system administrator or operatory to carry out. They are used as references to how certain processes should be carried out. 

IT services should provide runbooks for processes to solidify your team’s approach to both day-to-day needs, and to help them have a plan of action under circumstances that might be considered out of the ordinary, as well. Runbooks should be made specifically for the different processes that your administrators are in charge of.

Collaborate with Stakeholders

Your stakeholders are going to have an interest in the running of your IT, as any changes in it may affect them. As such, an IT service provider should not only be able to talk to their main point of contact, but they should be able to effectively communicate any plans or changes with stakeholders, answer their questions, and collaborate to ensure their needs are met and concerns addressed.

Provide a vCIO

A vCIO is a Virtual Chief Information Officer, and the individual who would essentially be in charge of both overseeing the technology strategy being implemented by the IT team and communicating that strategy with you. 

They will be your primary point of contact, seeking your input, keeping you up-to-date, and informing you of any matters with the strategy that might require your attention. They are both an experienced IT professional, and an individual with an understanding of business needs, serving as the perfect go-between for both.

Formulate a Disaster Recovery Plan

An IT crisis can lead to serious downtime, the likes of which a company can have a hard time recovering from if they don’t already know how they’re going to get back to complete operation capacity. A disaster recovery plan secures your system, identifies key players in helping the system get back to regular operations, and outlines the steps that they have to take to do so. It makes sure that when a crisis hits, your team can hit the ground running in containing it and getting back to regular operations.

If your IT company is failing to meet the needs as stated above, it may be time to look more closely at the teams that can. The above information should help you ensure that all of your IT needs are being met, not just some.

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