Managing the risk that comes with inviting a third party to your company’s technology ecosystem can prove an overwhelming prospect.

Aside from the basic confidentiality and security issues faced when exposing an outside vendor to your brand’s inner sanctum, there are often hurdles in the form of cross-cultural differences when it comes to the execution and integration of new information and communications technology (ICT) roadmaps.

While a robust procurement process, defined strategy, mutual trust and transparent cost structures can go some of the way to minimising this risk, partnerships can and do fall apart when communication breaks down, objectives are not met or budgets blow out.

Research and advisory company Gartner says spending on information technology products and services in Australia is forecast to reach almost $93 billion this year, an increase of 3.5 percent from 2018, slightly higher than the global average growth rate of 3.2 percent.

According to Gartner, 28 percent of spending within key enterprise IT markets globally will shift to the cloud by 2022, up from 19 percent on last year.

And in a market where 80 percent of customers plan to make a major change to their IT environment within the next two years, it’s important that providers operating in this field work hard to be at the top of their game to deliver on the value of these technology investments to customers.

With a goal of understanding how to offer more value to customers in both the public and private sectors, AC3 recently asked the industry what it wanted from a service provider. It sought input from nearly 400 existing customers, staff members and non-customers about what they consider to be the most important factors when it comes to choosing an end-to-end IT managed service provider. The results were enlightening.

Asked to rank a set of 22 factors by importance when choosing an IT managed services partner, 85 percent of respondents ranked “timely and efficient response to issues and requests” as the biggest issue that would persuade them to pick one service provider over the next. Boasting a “highly skilled and knowledgeable team across all customer touch points, and capacity to deliver expertise at any scale” was ranked second (84 percent), showing a clear expectation by customers that their chosen technology provider must be able to provide them with a knowledge base that far exceeds their internal skills.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, cost transparency was ranked third, with customers outlining a clear preference for an IT vendor able to eliminate any financial ‘surprises’ for the duration of the project by providing proactive cost management practices. It’s worth highlighting that “lowest cost in the market” was ranked second last, indicating that customers are looking for value for money rather than the cheapest price. According to respondents, other must-have factors included the vendor:

  • having a financially strong and stable company
  • offering flexibility around the business engagement model, and
  • providing expertise in compliance and legislation to ensure audit readiness. When it comes to the least important factors when selecting a new IT partner, these included “visible thought leadership on future trends” (71 percent) and “specialised expertise rather than end-to-end provider” (73 percent), suggesting that customers are looking for partners who ‘walk the walk’, instead of just ‘talking the talk’.

The respondents also identified slow call resolution times, poor communication and anxiety around purchase decisions as the biggest pain points involved in dealing with end-to-end IT managed service providers.

Learn more about how AC3 can help your business.