Are you constantly asking your IT company for help and advice? Or do you find that your team spends a lot of time following up trying to get answers to issues?
If you’ve ever wondered whether the IT support you are getting is proactive or reactive, here are five red flags to consider:
Monitoring — Is this the main way that the IT company identifies issues? 🚩 In reality, when an alert comes in, there is a problem you are REACTING to. You might just react faster because you are monitoring for it, but that doesn’t make it proactive (similar to a smoke alarm where you are alerted to an issue, but there’s still a fire).
Staff Time — In your outsourced IT company, do more than 50% of technical people work on tickets and billable project work? 🚩 The only true “tell” if an organization is proactive is by looking at their staffing. Find out how many technical people do NOT work on tickets or billable project work. Then you will know how many people are doing proactive work.
Reporting and Analysis — Are the root causes of your tech issues unclear? 🚩 There is tons of data in our company available to us, including what types of Help Desk issues are happening. This should be analyzed every month to find trends, root causes and reduce the number of issues moving forward. Ask for examples of the type of reporting and analysis you can expect and the process to implement action items.
Review, Audit and Align to Best Practices — If this isn’t happening on a regular basis, this is a huge 🚩. The best way of being proactive is to get hardware, software, configurations and processes aligned with proven best practices. Ask your IT company: How many best practices do you have? And what is your process is for getting us aligned with them?
Advice — Do you have to ask for advice on how to improve your technology? 🚩 This is the No. 1 red flag! If you have to ask for support, it’s NOT proactive. You should receive a regular flow of advice on how to improve your technology without having to ask for it.
A Proactive Approach
We believe being proactive needs to be ingrained in the culture of a business. A proactive approach means:
- Spending more time on business strategy, and less time putting out fires
- Predicting future costs for all tech needs, within budget
- Saving up to four hours per week per employee
- Protecting your organization and employees from cyber threats.
Want to move away from reactive IT support? Contact us and we’ll show you the journey to get you there.
