Hi, I’m Allison Mascolo. I’m a customer account manager, and today I’d like to talk about the importance of partnerships with your managed service provider.

Managed Service Provider Partnerships: Dedicated contact

So having a customer account manager provide you with that opportunity to reach out to your managed service providers to say anything from, “Hey, we’re moving,” or, “We have a couple of users that we’re going to hopefully allow to work remotely, and what do we do in that instance?” The customer account manager role is there not only to check on how your tickets are being handled when a user is having a basic technology issue, but also to help you to work on your budget. And as your company moves forward with the managed service provider, the customer account manager is the dedicated contact that will work on your annual reviews, to show where you have been, where you are now, and how to get your company to where it needs to be. Without that dedicated resource, your company can sometimes find itself in a position where they don’t necessarily know who to reach out to for what particular issue or up-and-coming move they may have. So it’s important to provide that one sole person who knows your company in and out, from day one all the way through.

Planning

Planning is an important aspect of your company’s growth and expansion that a managed service provider should provide on a regular basis. Your managed service provider should sit down with you on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis to discuss any new trechnologies that are emerging, what’s compatible with your system, how to provide for it to grow, and anything in between, from asset rotation of PCs, to bring-your-own-device technologies.

Bring Your Own Device

BYOD, or bring-your-own-device, is becoming a day-to-day issue for many companies, and something that your managed service provider should be sitting down with you to strategize with. BYOD, without the proper policy, your company will find itself in a situation where it may not have the proper levels of protection. By sitting down with your managed service provider, you can create a policy that you can implement company-wide. Not only will it allow for the proper technical support, but it will allow for your users to implement and bring in their own technologies, allowing for your company to grow and expand more.

Solutions

A managed service provider should be certified in multiple vendors to allow for your company to find the perfect fit in terms of its technological needs.