Managed IT Services are defined as the practice of outsourcing a wide array of technology services to a Managed Services Provider (MSP). The MSP is typically responsible for providing proactive management of an organization’s technology systems and for implementing strategies which will improve and streamline operations, and potentially decrease costs. MSPs work proactively by focusing on prevention of network and security failures, providing ongoing systems monitoring, delivering regular maintenance of the Client’s IT systems, assisting with IT Security Policy development, and providing IT expertise for strategic planning.

The overall concept behind managed services is to improve service delivery and provide better IT outcomes by shifting the burden of IT maintenance and support from the Client to a single Managed IT Services provider. Placing responsibility for Client IT operations with an MSP provides direct benefit to the Client by allowing their internal IT staff to focus on core business functions and ensuring that they receive best-in-class support and strategic consulting delivered by a dedicated team with deep technical and strategy expertise.

Managed IT Services is an evolution of the 1990s “break/fix” or Reactive IT support model, where providers performed on-demand services and billed the customer for the work done on a task basis. In contrast, Managed Services is a subscription based support model in which the Client has a binding contract with the MSP. The service contract specifies service level agreements and a scope of work to define the terms of engagement.

The key to a successful Managed Services engagement is defining the desired outcomes your organization expects from partnering with an MSP, rather than focusing on specific tasks you want them to execute. The scope of work with your MSP should be focused on the results of the services they provide rather than on how and what they do to achieve those outcomes. Emphasizing outcomes makes monitoring the value of the Managed Services much easier for the Client.

For smaller organizations, defining outcomes can be easier as often there are no in-house IT personnel. As such, the expectation of the MSP will be that it is responsible for most if not everything. For medium to large organizations with in-house IT personnel, defining the scope of a managed IT engagement involves determining which functions should go to the MSP so that the internal IT team can focus on strategic initiatives.

Whether your organization is small or large, a successful Managed Services engagement requires three key factors:

1. Letting go of traditional roles and control
2. A MSP that accepts responsibility for the delivery of outcomes
3. Having the right person oversee the MSP

Often a client will insist on maintaining certain roles and responsibilities, either to save on costs or to retain control. This mindset is often counter-productive, duplicates work, and can ultimately result in additional costs. For example, a small organization may be insistent that a staff member (often a non-technical person) will handle account setups, mailbox management, or file permissions. This individual will most likely struggle to follow proper procedures to ensure correct configuration and standardization. In a larger organization, the internal IT staff may want to manage troubleshooting server/network issues, and only escalate to the MSP when they can’t resolve them. At that point, the MSP will have to troubleshoot the issue all over again from the start, delaying the resolution of the issue. Any time invested by internal staff prior to the issue being escalated is lost time.

At the same time, if your organization is relinquishing roles and responsibilities, and ultimately some level of control to the MSP, the provider must also be fully willing and able to be held accountable for those functions. Furthermore, the MSP must have clearly defined expected outcomes in their scope of work. For example, 99.99% uptime of systems or reliability of data backups may be included in the scope of a defined support SLA. These results must be quantifiable and tracked. The client may request that the MSP provide reports on such metrics on a quarterly basis.

Finally, Clients must oversee MSPs, and having the right staff member oversee the provider is essential to a successful engagement. In many instances a technical person is given the responsibility of overseeing the provider. Instead, the ideal person should be a non-technical business-operations staff member who can provide insight about the organization’s ecosystem, it’s goals or mission, and work as a partner with the MSP. The MSP is already an expert in technical matters, or at least they should be. They shouldn’t need a technician to manage them. The relationship between the MSP and the internal point of contact needs to be a joint partnership where the two work together collaboratively, with the MSP providing technical guidance, and the internal staffer providing business input. For example, the staff member will be able to evaluate the business impact of a given solution on an organization’s staff, customers, members and other stakeholders. An MSP will not be able to provide this analysis in most cases.