Swipe left or swipe right
Technology has certainly changed the dating process over the years. Instead of awkwardly throwing yourself out there to be publically humiliated with rejection, you can be privately humiliated in the comfort of your own home! Based solely on your profile pic and the carefully worded description of your finer qualities, potential dating partners can either swipe right to engage further or swipe left and be done with you.
Things aren’t so different in shopping for a managed IT services provider in Atlanta. You check out a provider’s profile (website) and if it strikes your fancy, you might request more information. If it doesn’t appeal to you, you move along. Read this article, “What Does Your Website Say About Your Business?” for more about that.
So let’s say you’ve figuratively swiped right after visiting mis-solutions.com. What’s next? This is where the very deliberate dating ritual begins – only it’s not awkward, humiliating or painful. Our “ritual” is really a proven process to help you reach your technology goals and grow your business. Having been in business for 22 years, we’ve learned the best way to begin the process is with a non-threatening, good old fashion phone call.
I Like You – Do You Like Me?
At MIS, we call that a “discovery meeting” – a no-pressure phone conversation for us to get to know each other better. We ask thoughtful questions to learn more about your business and uncover what your wants and needs are. We will listen to your business goals to determine if we are able to help you reach them. If we find that your needs are outside our wheelhouse, then we can refer you to someone else. We also use the discovery call to tell you about MIS Solutions and our approach. This will give you a glimpse into how we operate so you can decide if you want to talk further. If we mutually decide this could be a “match,” then we move to the next step of our process – the business assessment.
Let’s Get to Know Each Other Better!
To understand what your company is trying to accomplish with your IT support, we delve a little deeper with a business assessment. We will come to your office to learn even more about your team, how you are currently managing your IT, who is responsible for security, who is responsible for documentation and who is responsible for giving your end users the support they need. We also spend time understanding your critical business processes – do you have people working in the field or remotely? Is your business driven by phone calls? Are you heavily dependent on email? Is compliance a critical issue for your business? We actually listen to find those areas of your technology that are problematic, represent risk or could be optimized.
During this face-to-face meeting, we conduct a network assessment that involves running a set of tools on the primary server or the domain controller. This process takes about 20 minutes and doesn’t access any of your company’s data. It’s more like an inspection where we check all the software licenses, user logs, system logs and how the hardware is configured. We look at network speed, age of your hardware and any other areas that might slow you down or add risk.
Back at our office, we run that diagnostic information through an analyzer that will deliver a very detailed report on the state of your network. We also have one of our engineers review it and prepare an executive summary in easy-to-understand language – not techno geek speak. We’ll arrange to meet again in about a week to review all the findings and recommendations. We’ll provide you with the detailed report – which is yours to keep – and go over our gap analysis. We’ll give you an honest assessment of what risk areas should be addressed now, what can wait until next week, next month or next year. We will also address any issues brought up during the initial face-to-face meeting and offer our recommendations on how to solve those.
This findings and recommendations meeting is also where we will provide an overview of the pricing, the approach and the timeline for onboarding, and answer any questions you might still have. We want you to have everything you need to make an educated decision – and be able to compare our company, approach, services, fee structure and professionalism to other providers before you engage. We do this so you can experience our level of professionalism, depth of expertise and attention to detail.
This is Getting Serious!
You should know that not all IT companies provide prospective clients with a thorough evaluation of their current technology environment, much less a comprehensive roadmap to help you achieve your business goals, in advance. In fact, many will ask what you want to do with your technology, put a quote together then email it to you without ever meeting you in person.
So why do we go the extra mile and put skin in the game to get to know your business and your wants and needs? Because we start the way we intend to go. We invest time to understand where you’ve been, where you’re going, what’s important to your team and what your company vision and growth plans are. Investing time to get to know you is the foundation for building a healthy relationship.
We value transparency to be clear and set your expectations on timelines and next steps. We’re going to be your partner in business – not another bad IT experience. You will see and experience what it’s like to work with a reliable, responsive and competent IT provider before you make a commitment. Being completely transparent in our pricing, what we can and cannot do and how we plan to execute is all laid out so you will know exactly what to expect before you decide to take our relationship to the next level.
If you’re ready to explore your IT provider options, we’d love to talk! Call (678) 745-5109. Or email us at info@mis-solutions.com. If you’re not quite ready to get in the game and want more information, download our FREE IT Buyers Guide HERE.