Choosing an IT provider without getting it wrong
Proposals all look alike on paper. What separates them shows up on the day of an incident, and can be read in advance in a few specific clauses.
What happens at three in the morning? Many contracts advertise continuous coverage and deliver a mailbox read the next day. Ask for the precise sequence: who is alerted, within what delay, and who decides.
Who will actually work on our account? The seniority shown in pre-sales is not always the one that turns up afterwards.
What happens if we leave? Reversibility must be described in the contract: documentation returned, access handed back, timeframe. A provider with no answer to that question has built a dependency.
How are you paid? A per-ticket model aligns the provider's interest with the number of incidents, not with their disappearance.
Exact scope. What is included, what is billed on top, and above all what is neither because nobody thought of it. Major version upgrades are the classic case.
Response commitments. Check they cover resolution and not only acknowledgement. A fifteen-minute acknowledgement says nothing about time to restore service.
Backup and restore. Frequency, retention, and above all a commitment to test restores. Without that last point you are buying a backup, not a recovery guarantee.
Ownership. Configurations, scripts, documentation and automation produced during the contract must belong to you.
Ask what went wrong at another client, and what was changed afterwards. A provider that has never had an incident is not telling the truth, and a provider who recounts an incident without saying what they took from it has learned nothing.
The quality of the answer to that question is the best indicator available before signing.
One provider or several?
A single provider simplifies coordination but concentrates dependency. Several providers reduce that risk but require someone to steer them. That is precisely the role of IT leadership, internal or fractional.
What commitment length is reasonable?
Twelve months is common and acceptable, provided the reversibility clause is clear. Be wary of long commitments with vague exit conditions.
How do you compare two very differently priced proposals?
By bringing both to the same scope. The gap almost always comes from what is included: coverage hours, version upgrades, restore testing, cost tracking. A cheaper proposal on a reduced scope is not cheaper.
This maps to our Fractional CIO offer, or talk it through with the founder.
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