Six tips for choosing the right managed services partner

The optimal outcome for an IT solution is to maximize return on investment (ROI) on building and implementing the technology. After all, why roll out a solution in the first place if it doesn’t help move your business forward?

A managed services provider is your partner in IT transformation. The goal is to find a provider who can build and run your IT solution, deliver better business outcomes, and grow with your business.

But what is the right approach for selecting the best provider for your business needs? What principles should you use to determine your managed services provider strategy?

Whether you’re looking for a managed services provider for one technology or multiple technologies, we’ve put together a list of key evaluation criteria to use when selecting the right managed service provider for you.

1. Does the provider have the right culture and expertise to successfully support the project?

This should be the first assessment. Process and tools help minimize the risk of failure, but people ensure success. Your goal is to understand who will be delivering services, and the breadth of their experience. What can you gather about the culture that surrounds the team which will be delivering the project?

Some questions to ask are:

• How many certifications does the organization hold, and how many people are certified?
• Is the organization referenced as a partner organization by the product company?
• Has the organization won any partner awards for technical delivery?
• Are any team members present in the partner community?

Why it matters

These indicators reveal how your project will be supported. For example, a team of two dedicated resources providing support via rostered shifts or on-calls may struggle to have all the experience necessary to deliver high-quality outcomes. A provider who can champion a team-based approach that involves experienced oversight from senior team members ensures work is managed in a way that delivers success.

A good provider relies on teamwork, an ownership mindset, and a continual service improvement approach. Seek out evidence of this in your assessment.

2. Can the provider demonstrate technical excellence in tools and process?

Success is achieved by the people delivering the service. But without the right tools and processes, the risk of failure is significantly higher.

The right capabilities help minimize impact to the technology under management. This includes tools that quickly detect solution behavior outside of the standard profile, minimize the impact of releases to production, and increase the quality and quantity of output as automation replaces repetitive manual tasks.

When assessing a provider, validate that it demonstrates technical thought leadership and proficiency for required managed services tools. Some examples include:

• Log aggregation solutions
• Telemetry solutions
• CICD solutions
• Source code solutions
• Operational management solutions
• Paging and escalation solutions.

Proficiency with these tools will become critical for delivery of specific service levels in any managed services contract. Make sure the provider has a strong answer for how it will deploy and utilize each one to meet the service outcomes.

3. How well does the team play with others?

When you look across the technology stack required to deliver a single solution in an organization, there is always a component that sits outside the management of a single provider. These are typically customized customer-specific components like internal networking, perimeter networking, and standard operating environments.

It’s important in this case to assess how well a provider works alongside other providers. You can assess this by asking several scenario-based questions to understand how it would manage the interactions.

For example:

• How would a provider manage an incident that is assigned to its team but likely has a root cause in a system managed by another provider? Will you be required, as the customer, to act as the go-between? Or is your partner prepared to engage directly on your behalf and work collaboratively to solve the problem?
• What evidence would be collected to identify where the issue is?
• Would collaborative troubleshooting occur and what mode of communication would be used?

These answers will allow you to assess vendor management overhead and the impact of partnerships. If you’re using the right criteria to pick your providers, your vendor management overhead will be minimal, as you’ll be getting the outcome you want, with teamwork across your portfolio of partners

4. Is there investment in your business?

Does your managed services provider have skin in the game? A good provider will want to deliver more than what is defined in the contract.

How can you tell if this is so? Understand what would happen if the provider lost your business.

• What’s the impact on the company?
• How will lost business impact its reputation?
• Is it making a dedicated innovation push within this technology area?

Dedicated providers that are aligned with your goals will excel to retain your business. The more of an impact, the more will be invested in making sure the service is successful.

5. How are the services provided valued?

Services is a straightforward business model. You pay your people salaries, which forms the majority of the cost base. You add on incidental costs required to run the business, plus specific costs for the contract, and you have the cost to deliver the service.

With this simple model, the relationship between the contract price and cost is very direct. In negotiations, customers who drive hard on price are also driving hard on costs to deliver the service. A provider cutting costs to win the business will lead you further away from the optimal outcome when the service is delivered.

As the customer, you have defined outcomes to achieve. Look for a provider who is open to negotiate during the process but remains steadfast on the value of the service. This lets you know the team is confident on delivering the outcomes you need, while taking cost into account for quality of outputs delivered.

6. Who is leading the way for the managed service vision?

Managed services leaders set the vision on the quality of service delivered and ensure the organization meets project goals. If leadership can articulate a vision that matches your goals, that is a good start.

Ensure that you know who will be ultimately responsible for the delivery of the service, and make sure they align on your vision. When speaking with leadership, ask questions like:

• What’s your strategy for keeping your team technically brilliant?
• What tools do you recommend, and why?
• When processes fail, how do you handle it?
• How do you work with other service providers?
• How do you define the value and quality of the services you provide?  

If you find this person and believe what they say – congratulations, you’ve just found your managed services provider.

The Capgemini approach

Capgemini sees managed services as more than an insurance policy for your business; it’s an investment that enhances the outcomes you deliver to your organization.

Our combined managed services and legacy integration transition will help maximize the return on investment of your IT transformation. We have hundreds of local and regional integration experts with real-world experience architecting, designing, building, and supporting your interfaces and APIs.

We can help make sure your transition to a cloud-first platform is as seamless as possible for your business. Contact us to learn more about our experience as a leading managed services provider.