How will you know when it’s time to switch to a new IT provider for your business?

When everything’s going well with your business IT provider, it’s possible you’ll almost forget they’re there, but when things do start to go awry, you’ll soon become aware. These are the signs that it’s time to switch to a new IT provider for your business.

You’ve outgrown them

Since you first decided to put your IT into the hands of an outsourced provider, you’ve taken on new team members and now rely more heavily on your IT infrastructure. At the time, a solo IT technician or very small company was great for the job, but now they’re struggling to keep up with your requirements.  If this is the case, look to a provider with a team that brings expertise in various areas and that is able to deal with support requests in a timely manner.

You want to try new technologies

Maybe you’ve been itching to try some new automation technology, or you’d love to build an in house CRM but your existing IT support hasn’t seemed so keen? If your IT company has legitimate concerns about the use of a certain technology and works with you to help come up with an alternative, then they’re doing a great job. If the problem is more that the change would create a lot of work they don’t have the capacity to do, then it’s probably time to look elsewhere to a provider that can support the technology you need.

They don’t challenge you

Following on from the above, when you request a major change or the implementation of a new system, it’s right that they should ask why you want to make that change. You want your IT to support your business goals, and your IT support company may have a better, more efficient way of doing this. If they’re willing to just implement changes without getting to the bottom of why, you could end up spending more money and time than is necessary on something that may not be perfect for the job.

On a similar note, if your IT company agrees to continue working with out of date, unsupported hardware or software without challenging you, they’re putting not only your systems at risk, but their own reputation, too. If your service provider insists that you update your systems it’s with good reason that they do.

They’re not proactive

When staff members have been submitting a lot of tickets about the same problem, you don’t want to suddenly find this out a few weeks or months down the line. If a particular issue is consistently causing issues for your team, you’d like your IT support company to flag this up and help you find a solution to the problem before any more time is wasted.

You’re tired of dealing with multiple suppliers

It’s entirely reasonable that your IT support company should redirect you to your internet service provider if you’re experiencing a connectivity problem, but when something’s not working and you just need it fixed, we understand that this can be frustrating. Even more so when no one seems able to resolve the problem and just shifts the blame to another supplier.  When you find this happening, it’s a good idea to consider how the time spent dealing with various different suppliers could be better spent if you were to move your IT and telecommunications services to a single provider.

Switching to a new IT support provider is perhaps not a decision any business leader would relish making, but if dealing with any of the above is holding your business back, you could benefit from switching IT suppliers.