Don’t settle for an IT “provider.” Forge a partnership.

Your relationship with your IT vendor shouldn’t be purely transactional. It should be a partnership based on trust, communication, and full strategic alignment on your company’s long-term objectives. To determine whether your MSPSo, what is a MSP anyways? A Managed Services Provider, or MSP, acts as an extension to your own team to offer on-demand IT support and carry the responsibility of all IT logistics, which could include: cybersecurity, infrastructure, licensing, software and hardware recommendations, purchasing and set up, etc. An MSP can also help keep you aligned on IT rules and regulations so that business owners can run their business without the worry of meeting regulatory requirements. is moving your company ahead or holding it back, consider the following:

• If they focus on solving problems as they arise rather than thinking holistically about how technology can enable your business’s success, that’s a problem.
• If they aren’t regularly discussing short- and long-term business goals with your leadership team, and proposing solutions aimed at helping you achieve them, that’s a problem.
• If they rigidly refuse to adjust their tried-and-true approach to meet your unique operational and technical challenges, that’s a problem.

Companies run into these problems with MSPs because they’ve hired a provider rather than a partner. It’s a problem that actively harms businesses every day.