Choosing an IT Provider
Choosing the right level of IT Support for your business, and also the right company to supply those services can be difficult. So here is a guide we've put together below.
Locality
Must of the value of out-sourced IT Support Services is derived from the fact that 90% of the work can be completed remotely. However, it makes sense to find a provider that are within your same region, so that should you need an emergency onsite visit, you can be confident that this is not going to be an issue. So whilst locality might not be the most important criteria, it is something that should be considered. PHICS-IT covers the South East Region of England.
Reputable
A reputable supplier will again mitigate risk and ensure that you'll be receiving a professional level of service and expertise. We recommend that a business be at least Microsoft Partner, and that will mean that its employees are Microsoft Certified.
Level of Cover
This is probably the hardest thing to assess, since various companies will provide a laundry-list of various features, so the question is how do you compare like-for-like ? Well ultimately you want to manage costs, so fixed price plans will provide that cost certainty, but it's important to understand the scope of support and ask the question what items are chargeable. At PHICS-IT all support work is inclusive within our fixed-price plans. That means you do not pay whether it takes 1 hour to resolve or 10 hours to resolve. The only items that are chargeable are projects, we never proceed with chargeable work without explicit authorisation from a key contact.
Quality
How quickly do your calls get answered ? Is the service consistent ? Do they even know your name ? This really is the differentiator with various providers. All will promise fantastic service, but few actually demonstrate how they will provide it. PHICS-IT has a Support Pledge that makes clear the level of service we are committed to delivering everytime.
Price
Last, but by no means least is Price. Price is probably the single biggest determiner of the supplier you choose. As the old adage goes 'you get what you pay for'. And this is certainly true and reflected in our support plans. If you want minimum commitment, and a low price point, then the break-fix variable price plan suits - but be careful, if you use us a lot, you'll pay on a per incident basis, so the real value of this plan are sites that have very little going wrong or changing, and just require server support cover. On the other hand, if you subscribe to a fixed price plan, you pay a bit more, but you get lots more value. Our prices are not budget, nor are they high-end, we choose sensible and reasonable price points that enable us to employee the quality and calibre of technicians to deliver a decent level of service.