Teceze Blog
Business Technology Partner – The Ultimate Guide to Choose the Right one
Your IT systems can be optimised by a good business technology partner and allow business growth, but only if you support the right horse. This is the ultimate guide to the option of the right partner for business technology.
It is a bit like making a bet to select an IT partner. After all, with your corporate IT, you trust a third party. This guide will help you find all the knowledge you need to make a well-informed decision about the role.
How to Choose the Right Business Technology Partner?
It is an obvious option to use an external technology partner because it allows you to tap into a pool of highly experienced, professionally trained people whose engagement with other organisations provide you with access to a broader expertise and deeper knowledge when serving as your internal IT department. And that’s a cost-effective partnership without considering partnering because you don’t have the costs associated with hiring workers.
However, to ensure that you truly see all the ultimate benefits of this strategy, it is important that you select the right business technology partner.
To ensure that you choose the right IT partner to meet the needs of your company now and in the future, there are many questions to ask. These rely on a prospective technology provider conducting complete and comprehensive due diligence and taking time to consider all your choices.
You need to find the partner you have chosen:
- It has a fully staffed team that is available, technically knowledgeable and able to deal with any IT problem you might have.
- Provides frequent meetings with active account management to provide two-way input and guidance on the success of service level, recent information security and technology changes. Successful partners in IT spend a great deal of time listening to your needs and trying to understand them.
- Uses rigorous security vetting for employees and hires fit and proper individuals to rely on access to the business-critical systems and sensitive information.
- With reasonable amounts of monetary obligations, it is financially sound. In order to fulfil these financial obligations, they must be able to display comprehensive business sustainability plans, ensuring uninterrupted support for you now and in the future.
- Receives favourable references. Call out and get input from colleagues who are actually using the provider. Ask for site references from the supplier.
- Simple onboard and off-board. It is also viewed as a complicated, lengthy and expensive process to switch to or from a new IT provider. This transition should be seamless for a trustworthy and competent provider, but it is vital to understand the process before making the transition, especially when cloud providers are involved.
- A comprehensive list of IT partners, distributors and certifications can be shown. Speak about their experience with IT partners to colleagues in other companies. Who are they recommending?
- It is accessible and straightforward from the beginning on what is included in your support or managed service contract and what is not. If you pay a fixed rate, it is always difficult to compare as for such, then you need to know what kind of things can be considered as outside of your contract and are thus chargeable. It would be possible for a responsible managed service provider to itemise these. In order for all parties to know exactly how the contract operates, they should also be able to provide you with a daily utilisation report.
- Shows good policies, standards and corporate governance.
Five things that every business technology partner will offer –
Flexible Offering
You need a provider that can expand with you if you’re a growing business. Working with an adaptable partner offers you help based on the needs of your organisation. With that kind of assistance, you can rest easy knowing that as you expand, you have a partner that offers flexible services, making them a future-proof option.
When considering technology partners, forward-thinking is critical. For instance, if your business strategy requires the growth of your internal IT team, you would need a provider who can make it easier. With the least amount of hassle, they need to be able to help you pass IT management to new team members. No matter how many team members you hire, they also need to be able to do this.
Seamless Interactions
IT conversation may as well be Klingon for some people. Even if you consider yourself tech-savvy, make sure you can ‘speak tech’ in plain English with your prospective partner, even if it’s just for the rest of your team’s sake.
At the same time, you want to be able to listen to a business technology partner, easily define your problem, and solve it with the least amount of feedback from you.
Are they going to send individuals to your office for routine check-ins? As well as access to a support desk, can you have your own appointed support engineer? We have noticed in our experience that clients enjoy having a reliable, committed engineer because it enables them to establish powerful, efficient communications.
More than only assistance with IT
You could think all you need is an IT support provider when considering outsourcing your IT. What you need is, after all, a service that ‘keeps the lights on’ and keeps your IT going, right?
Not necessarily. However, the establishment of your relationship, as usual for your IT, will mark the end of the business. Indeed, more than just help, the most productive technology partnerships deliver even more. Partners with strong market technologies also have:
- The knowledge to be able to make your IT more effective.
- Awareness to understand and advise on what technology services can help the organisation operate more effectively.
- Uses rigorous security vetting for employees and hires fit and proper individuals to rely on access to the business-critical systems and sensitive information.
If your organisation does not have the in-house team to be able to successfully handle your IT, partners in business technology will provide forward-thinking advice, productive assistance and free up and maximise the time of your employees. This in order to concentrate on your business.
An awareness of your business
No partner at all is a business technology partner who doesn’t understand your business. They can be a hindrance to your success in the business.
Before starting any relationship, give a thorough briefing of your business to any potential partner. It means that you know each other going forward. This will already be insisted on by every great business technology partner as an important first step in their process.
You should also consider having a business technology partner in your field who is already an expert. Partnering with a professional ensures they know the specifications already, so they can easily get up and running.
For example, Teceze has a great deal of experience working with businesses in accounting, financial services, law firm and PR (although we also work with other types of businesses).
A service that is efficient
Server crashes, data losses and security breaches do not respect the 9-5 working week.
At any time, IT disasters can occur, so you need 24/7 support to reverse the situation as soon as possible. You risk growing downtime for your company, losing team efficiency and even compromising your relationship with clients and customers if a partner you’re considering can’t guarantee this.
Consider Teceze
At Teceze, to help them get the most out of their IT investment, we partner with professional services companies. We believe that we can assist you. In fact, if we don’t live up to your standards, then we give a 30-day trial of our services and guarantee you your money back. Our 10 years of experience, however, makes us sure that that will not occur.
The only way to protect what you’ve worked hard to build is to be vigilant when it comes to cybersecurity. If you’d like to know more about how your business can benefit from managed services, just give us a call, we are here to help.
