Finding the Right IT Provider: Avoid These 8 Mistakes

Finding the Right IT Provider: Avoid These 8 Mistakes

Your business can benefit a lot from working with an IT provider. However, you need to avoid several key mistakes when choosing your team.

Time spent on trying to figure out the technology you use in your business can be costly. While doing that, you can’t focus on your business needs, which can then result in poor customer satisfaction.

This is where IT providers come into play.

They enable you to outsource hardware and computing-related services, such as managed IT security and cloud computing. IT providers can also provide a robust IT infrastructure so that you can direct your attention to revenue-generating activities.

While there are numerous IT providers to choose from, not all of them may accommodate your business’s specific needs. And integrating with the wrong team can raise your spending due to irrelevant services, recurring security issues, data backup problems, and downtime.

Therefore, you need to be extra careful when selecting your team. The only way to avoid disappointment is to avoid these eight common mistakes when looking for the right IT provider.

THE EIGHT MISTAKES

MISTAKE #1 – INSISTING ON THE NEWEST TECHNOLOGY

Many advertisers want to trick you into believing that the latest technology will resolve all your issues. While the newest virtualization or cloud offerings can boost operations in many enterprises, they might not suit your business. Hence, don’t let the hype surrounding new products dazzle you.

Carefully consider the results your IT provider will help you achieve and determine if the investment enables you to fulfill them. Your provider shouldn’t confuse you with state-of-the-art features – they should guide you and allow for seamless integration.

MISTAKE #2 – FAILURE TO CONSIDER THE RESPONSE TIMES

Determining the response times of your prospective IT providers is essential. You need to ask them how long they usually take to reply to queries and resolve problems. Be sure to gauge their onsite support efficiency, too. Not inquiring about their availability is another grave error. Your IT team should provide specialists that will monitor your system. Constant monitoring and availability can help ensure you can detect IT issues early. With this, the provider can immediately administer patches and updates to safeguard against disasters. Furthermore, your IT provider should offer simple access to their desk support. You should be able to contact them via email, phone, and chat for instant guidance.

MISTAKE #3 – NEGLECTING THE SECURITY ASPECT

Disregarding the security features of your IT provider might be the most severe mistake. Teams with improper defense mechanisms can’t shield your system from cyber attackers, increasing the risk of losing data and access to resources. To avoid this, look for IT providers that can protect you from malware and other threats. They also need to prioritize protecting your business’s confidential data, like trade secrets and customer information.

When it comes to specific security measures, your IT provider should have features that prevent data intrusions instantly upon detection. The list includes phishing attacks simulations, web content filtering, DNS security, endpoint protection, mobile device management, and dark web protection.

In addition, responsible teams should eliminate point-of-sale and network intrusions before they compromise your system. Making sure they abide by security compliance and government regulations is also paramount.

MISTAKE #4 – FORGETTING THE BUDGET

Many IT companies operate under pay-as-you-go pricing schemes. Although this helps you minimize upfront investment, adopting a large number of technologies simultaneously without considering the recurring costs can cripple your finances.

Thus, think twice before signing on the dotted line.

Research your providers thoroughly and draft your budget with professional assistance. These steps can prevent considerable frustration down the line.

MISTAKE #5 – NOT DETERMINING SCALABILITY

One of the biggest impediments to growing your company is choosing an IT provider with poor scalability.

By contrast, scalable IT teams allow your business to evolve and grow. They can continually extend their services to accommodate your company’s goals, even if these goals change.

MISTAKE #6 – OPTING FOR A NON-RESPONSIVE SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT

Service level agreements (SLAs) hold IT providers accountable for their services. It establishes standards for responsibilities, quality, scope, and delivery time in writing. Without it, you’ll have no way of ensuring transparent collaboration.

When selecting your IT provider, find one with a responsive agreement. It can help guarantee the SLA scales with their services while rendering continual improvement.

MISTAKE #7 – LACK OF TEAM TRAINING AND FEEDBACK

The story doesn’t end once you’ve found and partnered with a trustworthy IT provider. New technologies won’t magically increase your bottom line and decrease outputs.

To accomplish your goal, your employees will still need to understand how to use your new tech solutions. But bear in mind that not every team member may be able to grasp new tools easily. Some may even prefer the existing platforms. Fortunately, you can hire IT experts to train them. These professionals should simplify any complex steps and advise your staff on making the most of your new investment.
Also, some enterprises set up regular training but fail to monitor their team’s performance. This is a huge mistake, as it keeps you from assessing your employee’s response to new technologies.

So, conduct questionnaires and other forms of feedback collection to determine and address any weaknesses.

MISTAKE #8 – IGNORING EXPERIENCES WITH PREVIOUS CLIENTS

Choosing an IT provider is similar to buying standard products and services. Failure to check user reviews can lead to disappointment.
To get a clear picture of your IT team’s capabilities, analyze their current and previous clients from similar industries. Look for reviews, testimonials, and ask the provider for a list of projects and references.

After doing your due diligence, you should be able to tell whether an IT provider is an ideal match for your company. However, keep in mind that every IT team is different. For instance, they might be well-versed in the healthcare industry but have no experience working with retailers. That’s why as mentioned, stick to IT providers servicing your industry to get the best results.

FIND THE RIGHT FIT

Nobody wants to end up with a poor IT provider that can’t deliver great results, leaves your company open to cyberattacks, and causes other vulnerabilities. Your investment goes down the drain, and your operations suffer.

Luckily, we can show you a way out.

Let’s arrange a quick, 10-15-minute obligation-free chat. We can discuss more ways on how to find the right IT provider for you and ensure you get your money’s worth. Feel free to schedule a quick call with a Morefield specialist to discus what is right for your organization.

 

 

Article used with permission from The Technology Press.

Wireless Design Steps for Success

by Rob Gratowski

Wireless connectivity for most enterprise environments has matured from a convenient mode of connectivity to a mission critical mode of connectivity. So how do we ensure that our wireless user experience is in line with the increased criticality of our wireless network?

All too often wireless networks are deployed by just picking spots and placing access-points. While this approach will most likely give you wireless coverage, it will also most likely not give your wireless user a great wireless experience. For wireless users to have a great wireless experience you need to have a wireless design not a random wireless deployment.

So, this is where most people say, “I need a wireless survey.” While a wireless survey is a component of a wireless design, by itself, it is not a complete wireless design.

 

 

Components to consider when performing a wireless design

 

Important wireless Design and Development Questions:

  • What applications will be used on the wireless network?
  • Will the wireless network need to support voice, video, or location?
  • How many wireless clients do you expect your wireless network to support?

These are all important questions needed to establish parameters that you will use in your wireless design.

 

Wireless Clients

Wireless clients come from many different manufacturers and use many different components. It is important to know what wireless client you intend to use and the capabilities of that client.

Identify the “most important, least capable” client and frame your design to support this client.

 

Choosing the Best Access-Points

Let’s consider this question, can you pull a horse trailer with a car? Sure, but should you? Probably not. A truck would be a much better choice for pulling a horse trailer – same applies to access-points. If you need to support enterprise activities, you should be using an enterprise grade access-point. Remember, components matter. Choose an access-point make and model that will satisfy your intended use and design using that access-point. Never design using an access-point that will not be used in the actual wireless deployment and never design using the “mythical” generic 802.11 wireless access-point.

How will you know if you met your wireless design requirements?

You will know you’ve met your wireless design requirements with validation. Every good wireless design should include an onsite validation component. Using the initial wireless design requirement as performance indicators, you should be able to validate the deployed wireless network against the wireless design requirements. This is also a good time to assure that the “most important least capable” wireless client also performs as desired.

 

Need Help with Your Wireless Design?

Contact Morefield Communications to learn how we can help with your wireless needs. Our team of IT experts have been providing best-in-class solutions across client networks and IT support for decades. Reach out online or give us a call at (717) 761-6170 to speak with an expert about possible solutions for your problem.

Morefield Communications Voted Top Winner in Central Penn Business Journal’s Reader Rankings

Voted Top Winner in 4 Technology Categories: Best IT & Tech Support Co., Best Data Management and Protection Co., Best Audio/Visual Co., and Best Telecommunications Co.

Morefield Communications was honored to be voted a top winner in several categories at the Central Penn Business Journal’s 2019 Reader Rankings Awards. Morefield was voted top winner in 4 categories: Best IT & Tech Support Co., Best Data Management and Protection Co., Best Audio/Visual Co., and Best Telecommunications Co..

The annual awards program recognizes top businesses throughout the Central PA region, as voted by CPBJ subscribers and the general public.

This year, CPBJ received nearly 3,000 nominations and almost 18,000 votes in dozens of categories including construction & design, education, finance, hospitality, employers, IT/tech, health care, real estate, and professional services.

Morefield came in the top 3 in the following categories: Most Innovative Workplace, Best Company Culture, and Best Overall Leadership.

Thank you to everyone that voted, our extremely dedicated staff & our clients to whom we could not have achieved this without!

For a list of all 2019 winners, click here.

CPBJ’s Top 250 Private Companies: 2018 Edition

The technological marvels of the past are sprinkled across the landscape of Central Pennsylvania — from the towering stacks of power plants to the massive combine harvesters that will soon be mowing down row after row of corn.

The technologies of tomorrow are harder to spot, but they are slowly making themselves felt on the region’s construction sites, factory floors and office cubicles.

Drones are making panoramic aerial shots as prosaic as selfies. Robots are elbowing their way onto production lines. And software products are providing new tools for exploring, understanding and acting on the bottomless pools of data available to us.

At the Central Penn Business Journal, we decided to look more closely at how the region’s largest private companies are using — and preparing for — the tools of tomorrow.

In addition to asking them for revenue and other baseline information, we asked companies what technologies they have incorporated, as well as what they consider likely to appear down the road.

We couldn’t include everything companies told us about. But we hope the results are as educational for readers as they have been for us.

We learned about artificial intelligence and augmented reality, flying taxis and data visualization, among other cutting-edge tools. Companies also shared how they are advancing more established technologies, like online sales and solar power.

New for us this year is publication of the full list of Top 250 private companies. In the past, we printed the Top 100 and put the remaining 150 online. This year, they are all on paper, an old technology that has not lost its place.

Morefield Communications Expands Territory with New Sales Representative Patrick Doyle

Doyle brings a wealth of industry knowledge and the ambition to increase our footprint further in the Lehigh Valley

Morefield Communications, a full-service communications technology company, specializing in IT Services, Cloud Solutions, Networking, VoIP, A/V Solutions, Security and Situational Awareness, is pleased to announce that Patrick Doyle has been hired as a Sales Representative.

Doyle is originally from Philadelphia, PA and currently resides in Orwigsburg, PA. His 16 years of experience in IT sales make him a playmaker in the industry.

Doyle began his career sharpening his techniques as a sales consultant and field engineer for Pitney Bowes. His talent for IT sales was quickly recognized as he continually exceeded goals and boosted revenue. Since then, Doyle hasn’t looked back. Following his passion for business development, Doyle knew the chance to expand Morefield’s territory into his own town was right for him. Doyle will be developing new customer relationships and increasing Morefield’s footprint in the Lehigh Valley.

“I am excited about this opportunity. Morefield’s vision of where the industry is moving aligns perfectly with my ambitions,” said Doyle. In addition to growing sales and expanding Morefield’s footprint, Doyle looks forward to being a thought leader within the organization and sharing his passion for technology.

“I am pleased to have Patrick join the Morefield team,” remarked John Grove, Vice President of Sales. “Patrick is a motivated, knowledgeable sales professional who brings a wealth of industry experience to the team. His determination to bring the best solution to the client will complement our existing high-performance sales team and support our company goals.”

Contact:
Briana Carr
(717) 763-6915
briana.carr@morefield.com

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