Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are gaining popularity in the business world as a viable option for IT management across the board. Whether your company has an inhouse IT department or not, an MSP can help your business get the most out of your IT by developing your IT infrastructure and providing you with services that will help your business grow. Partnering with an MSP, in fact, should be the best choice you’ve ever made if you want to put your business on the path to success.
The reality is though, that not all partnerships are a perfect match, so it’s important to know when your MSP is no longer working for you. Do you find yourself asking questions about your IT systems and wondering why problems keep happening? Perhaps, you have more employees working from home who are having trouble doing so, or you are wondering why it takes so long for them to respond when you are experiencing issues.
Without an experienced, helpful, and responsive MSP on your team, your business could be paying the ultimate price by facing more downtime and major security breaches.
So, what are the signs that you should find another MSP?
RECURRING PROBLEMS
To detect and resolve problems that could impact your business, MSPs use thorough monitoring systems and state of the art incident databases. As their goal is to resolve the issue as quickly as possible, a good MSP uses established documentation and systems to fix and resolve any issues in not only a timely manner but also to prevent it from happening again.
Repeated issues are usually an indication that the provider is not tracking the problems correctly or that they are using temporary ‘patches’ which are just that – temporary. Your MSP should know about failed backups, low memory, and PC or server crashes before you do and ensure that the issue is a limited event, restricted in its damage to your business, and unlikely to reoccur. 
SLOW OR ZERO RESPONSE
Without a doubt, your MSP should be knowledgeable and qualified to deal with your IT issues, but they should also be available. If your provider consistently takes extended periods to respond to a submitted issue, then it might be time to switch to another provider.
When an issue is submitted, it is put into a service request category – typically: Critical, High, Medium, Low. The categorisation is determined by how much impact the issue will have on your business and its operations. Therefore, a ‘Critical’ issue and a ‘low’ issue will be handled according to different timelines, so it is important to be aware of this, but it is still necessary that your MSP communicate with you to ensure that issues are resolved promptly.
NO STRATEGIC IT PLANNING
The purpose of working with an MSP is not just about maintaining the IT infrastructure you currently have. A good MSP should be strategizing and planning to ensure that your future IT – hardware, software, training, workflow – is in line with your overall business goals. By providing thought-leadership skills and ‘best practices’ recommendations, your MSP should be using their knowledge and expertise to guarantee that your IT is an asset and not a hindrance to your business growth in the future. 
SECURITY AND DATA ISSUES
Cybersecurity is something that all businesses should be talking about as worldwide cybercrime costs are expected to hit $6 trillion annually by the end of 2021. Now is definitely not the time to be lackadaisical about security updates and data issues. As email is the primary way in which many cyberattacks are launched, it is important that your MSP is staying on top of your email security and network management. Security updates and data backups should be done regularly so that your organisation is protected at all times with the highest level of security, and that your essential data is consistently maintained and backed up.
At the end of the day, your partnership with an MSP should be adding value to your business and making your life easier – not harder.
As a business owner, it is important that your partnership with an MSP is helping you get to where you want to go by providing you with the IT infrastructure and services you need. If you feel that your current MSP provider is not meeting those needs, the expert team at Lindentech can take care of you.
