Management is not the enemy, but many IT teams struggle with demonstrating the value that comes with improvements in technology, people, and processes. While there is no silver bullet when explaining these concepts to non-technical executive leadership, Solve iT brings decades of experience bridging that gap. Communication is the first and foremost key to success, and as a third party we find that executive adoption of our time tested processes is much higher when there is buy in to change by both IT as well as executive leadership.
Of course, that means that we must establish clear boundaries of responsibility, a process for escalation and tracking, and open communication between Solve iT personnel and on premise IT with every Co-Managed IT Services client. Solve iT is committed to establishing and building upon trust, both with the IT team, and with executive leadership. Once each parties' responsibilities are defined, periodic review needs to happen so that things can get tweaked. This needs to happen frequently during the first year, and typically tapers off a bit from there as day-to-day interaction is fairly common.
After onboarding, Solve iT will typically review a client's hardware refresh cycle and a cyber security assessment to enable us to establish mutually agreed upon operating logistics that align with industry best practices. Frequently, these are mapped to Frameworks such as CIS or NIST which help management understand the need. Sometimes we also need to explain the risk to ensure that executives are thinking with more than just the financial cost associated with a thing. In any case, we document all recommendations, discussions, and executive decisions just to prevent confusion. After all, the more standardization we achieve with current, supported operating components, the fewer fires there should be to put out. Let's keep things ship shape!
From this point, as trust grows clients usually begin to share internal projects and initiatives. This is where partnership really helps you shine. Now you are focused on helping the business grow instead of trying to get caught up all of the time, or at best just treading water. Having a resource to bounce ideas off of who works in many different client accounts and industries is a big benefit. Have you worked with this, What's the best way to do that, etc... While we experience a lot of different technologies in our work, we will be the first to tell you when we don't know something, or we have limited experience with a given technology. Most of the time, we are willing to kick the tires on tech, because... hey we're geeks, and we have resources. Regardless, depending on the scope of the testing there's typically no extra charge.
In all cases, we truly partner on everything including end-user education and risk management through our Co-Managed IT Services program. Take a look at some of our Service, Tools, Methodologies and Portals (STMPs) by clicking the button below.
