Hiring an MSP to manage your company’s IT responsibilities is a proven way to save your company thousands of dollars in staffing, and help provide quick resolutions should something go drastically wrong.

But your business doesn’t simply exist in a limbo between emergencies. Your MSP should also offer complete day-to-day functional support. If it’s not, you’re only taking advantage of a small part of what an MSP can do for you, and maybe leaving a lot of money on the table.

What Makes a Great MSP

At a minimum, your IT service management should include:

Customized Assistance When and Where You Need It

Emergencies rarely restrict themselves to banker’s hours. And if your company has offices all over the state or country you need to know you’re covered no matter which city or time zone the problem is located in.

And the answers have to be specific to your problems. The “typical” answers available in a standard support document may be miles from your specific implementation.

Functional Support for Your Oracle Enterprise Applications

Of course, general IT help and support are going to be major parts of your service level agreement (SLA), but if you’re also utilizing Oracle Enterprise Applications, your needs are beyond what basic IT support can provide. Your MSP should have techs dedicated to optimizing your Oracle software.

And they should do it in a way that seamlessly integrates itself into the way you do business. You shouldn’t be forced to change your business practices to accommodate them.

A Dedicated Lead Business Analyst

Knowing the ins and outs—and especially the costs—of your IT services is not the job for an overworked administrative assistant or a part-timer at a co-lo. The Lead Business Analyst assigned to your company needs to have the breadth and depth of experience to ensure that not just your applications run smoothly, but future projects and implementations are integrated smoothly into your company’s infrastructure.

Release Planning

Just because a new version of an application or platform has been released into the wild doesn’t mean it’s a good fit for your company right off the bat or ever. Your MSP should know exactly what company processes will be affected, and have the necessary fixes ready should something not update as planned.

Annual Functional Health Check

Even the best-managed IT departments can have a lot of small, unnoticed changes and inefficiencies creep into their day-to-day operations. Having an annual check-up on your software and hardware helps ensure small problems don’t become business-halting ones.

Unlimited Support Tickets

The last thing any company can afford is to hit their support quota right when things go south. Support issues are inevitable in even the best run systems, and if yours still has room for improvement your MSP should be ready and willing to help you get there.

On-site Support

Sometimes there’s just no substitute for having someone standing in front of your server racks or monitors. MSPs who insist that everything can be handled remotely are putting you in a catch-22. You can’t afford to hire someone just to come in once a month, but you can’t afford to let necessary support issues stand.

Reduced Support Costs

If you’ve run the numbers and your IT support is still costing the same as when everything was in-house, you’ve got the wrong MSP for your company.

Application Data Consistency Assistance

One of the oldest acronyms in the computer world is GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Your MSP should help ensure that all fields, forms, and values are filled out completely, and all information sent between departments isn’t lacking critical elements. “I thought you meant…” can cost your company thousands of dollars.

And as your company grows and processes change, your data should still consistent across your company.

Applications End-user Administration

Basic security restrictions, new hires for growing departments, new hires replacing former employees, lost passwords. It’s one of the least glamorous tasks an IT department has, but it’s vitally important to keep your company running smoothly.

Functional Setups and Printing Administration

Another thankless but critical task. Every new hire needs a phone, computer, email account(s), and a baker’s dozen of other items on the Welcome Aboard checklist.

And, of course, until the dream of a paperless office becomes a reality, the printer network needs to be maintained.

Application Usage and Navigation Assistance

New hires don’t always get the best training. Like a copy of a copy, each new hire may have less and less complete training. Having staff on call whose job is to know every in and out of your supported applications can save your business thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours every year due to lost productivity.

Provide Suggested Configuration and Setup Changes

With more dedicated IT experience, MSPs are much more familiar with typical best practices for your hardware and software, and what changes from the norm work best under certain situations. They can help provide the best starting place to optimizing your systems.

Of course, it’s still your company. Unless you’ve ceded total control to your MSP, they shouldn’t be implementing any new configurations or changes without your approval.

Oracle software issue management

Software as complex as Oracle applications requires a bit more than just a quick search on Google to find solutions when things go wrong. Make sure your MSP will take ownership of raising and managing necessary Oracle Service Requests.

Regression Testing

All too often when software gets patched or enhanced, or configurations change, things stop working the way they used to. If it’s not a commonly used function, though, it might be days or weeks before the break is identified.

Sometimes when one bug is fixed it reveals new bugs that had gone unnoticed.

Like the human body, a problem in one area may only be a symptom of something that is wrong in a completely different area.

Without regression testing, companies would eventually grind to a halt under the weight of all of the new problems compounding on the old. Make sure your MSP makes regression testing a priority service.

The Wrap-Up

Reduced IT staffing and disaster preparedness and recovery are valuable services offered by MSPs, but without daily, top-flight functional support companies will fail to fully realize all that an MSP can do for them.

Contact us to learn more about what makes the best MSPs stand out.