Augment provides a Fractional IT Director responsible for managing your MSP
How does Augment work?
Your new Fractional IT Director is an experienced technology professional with a "Business First" approach to decision making. They serve as your "trusted liaison" to ensure MSP contract deliverables are met, measurable, and reported timely.
You likely hired your MSP to avoid staffing one or more IT positions. After all, a good MSP doesn't have just one person doing everything for your business. They have multiple employees with a blend of skills capable of managing your technology with industry standard solutions and best practices.
Eliminate Uncertainty
msp Augment applies the same logic for MSP IT management - if you didn't want to staff the technical positions for these and other reasons, why would you want to manage the MSP independently? How do you challenge the MSP to improve? How do you know if you are keeping up with your peers, or doing more, to ensure you are competitive?
IT management is not unique - experience, capability, and willingness are all required to effectively manage IT just like any other functional role or department your business relies on.
Strengthen
Everyone performs better
Your FIT Director understands the importance of maintaining a positive relationship with your MSP.
Even a strong MSP may feel threatened when a portion of control shifts to an external party. This is especially true when some level of decision influence or authority is no longer under the MSP’s control, as this may inherently require the MSP to adjust certain practices and could even impact future revenue they intend to collect from your business.
Your FIT Director knows how to coach your MSP in a positive and productive way. This starts with operational support matters and spans remaining areas of IT - product selection, implementation, data management, cyber security, and much more.
Your FIT Director also knows how to professionally challenge, influence, and task your MSP - SLA/SLO failures, customer service challenges, overengineered solutions, solutions with little value for the business outcomes you wish to achieve, and the "Us Too" products that just aren't necessary are identified for course correction.
Assessment - where the excitement begins...
Do any of these questions look familiar?
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Is no news good news?
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Are we really using everything we pay for?
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Do I need more or less tech to reach my business outcomes?
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If all is quiet does that mean IT is running the way it should?
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Do I have someone on staff that has enough technology experience to productively collaborate with my MSP for me?
A neutral party can help answer questions you have and the questions you haven't thought to ask yet
Summary Checklist
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Contractual v. Actual Service Summary
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Technology Inventory & Review
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Identify Focus Areas Important to the Business
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Recommendations Report w/ Spend Shift Approach
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Pivot Plan for IT Ops Management
Executive Overview - Assessment Process
Our msp Assessment process reviews your current technology environment so we may better understand what you have in place, what your business values, and where any deficiencies may exist.
We then analyze the current support contract you have with your MSP and grade how well they are delivering service as previously agreed, as well as how they report on what we believe are essential to the operations of any small business.
A detailed summary of findings and Plan of Action (PoA) without the Silicon Valley jargon is then presented to your team.
So what's next after the Assessment?
Things are off to a great start with the Assessment finished.
Our Plan of Action, or PoA, includes your MSP in a variety of different ways. Your business, our business, and your MSP all play a part with making the PoA successful. It's now time for us to collectively sharpen our pencils and get to work.
Augment
Timing can always be challenging - multiple parties with different priorities, current budget cycle, and the list goes on and on.
The PoA accounts for and anticipates timing of deliverables based on your business priorities and the level of involvement or change necessary for your MSP to meet required outcomes.
Once it makes sense to proceed, we begin working independently with your MSP so you can focus on your business.
Let’s Work Together