Top five questions to ask your service provider
Not all service providers are created equal, so don’t make assumptions when it comes to how they do business and serve their customers. It’s important to ask the hard questions, to ensure your service provider is a good fit for your business’ current and future needs.
1. How can you help my business strategy?
A great service provider doesn’t just offer tech support and help you keep the lights on, they also act as a trusted adviser. Part of this role involves helping your organisation to plan ahead, make the most of new opportunities and leverage technology to deliver outcome-based solutions in alignment with your goals.
There’s no one-size-fits-all solution, so you don’t want a service provider that takes a cookie cutter approach to meeting your needs. Ask your service provider how they manage accounts, build relationships and understand your unique business goals and requirements. This is especially important if organisations in your sector must abide by specific compliance and regulatory obligations.
2. What are your certifications, competencies and partnerships?
It’s important to ensure that your service provider is a good fit for your business and aligns with your technology stack and roadmap. Their list of certifications, competencies and partnerships offers insight into where their strengths lie, and you should also ask about their processes for internal training and certifications to keep them up-to-date with the latest technologies and industry best practice.
Even the most capable service provider sometimes needs to call upon the expertise of others, so ask about their partnerships, including close relationships with the major vendors as well as specialist providers.
3. Which methodologies do you follow and how are your SLAs (service-level agreements) structured?
To ensure you’re in safe hands, ask your service provider which best practice methodologies, project management frameworks and processes they use to deliver work, ensure quality and manage risk. Look for adherence to proven and mature methodologies such as Agile and PRINCE2.
At the same time, ask about SLAs in terms of scope, response times, support hours and uptime. You need to ensure these align with your business requirements and are in line with your compliance and regulatory obligations.
4. What is your business roadmap?
A great service provider becomes a partner on your business journey, so it is important to ensure their business roadmap complements your own and you’re not likely to outgrow each other in the near future. You’re looking for stability and sustainable growth plans, to underpin your own plans.
Asking about roadmaps includes assessing their technology roadmap to ensure they are prepared for the challenges that lie ahead. This includes being across industry trends and technological changes, such as remaining in step with the product roadmaps of the major vendors.
5. What is your strategy around offboarding your customers?
Even if your service provider is a perfect fit for your organisation, there may still come a day when you decide to part ways. You need to ensure that your contractual obligations are clear and there is a structured offboarding process in place. To minimise risk, you need the security and protection of minimal business interruptions and managed costs as you change service providers.