Handing IT work over to an outside team is, in most organizations, not a decision made all at once; it means replacing an arrangement that has been “managed somehow” for years with a written one. As a decision maker you do not need to know every technical detail. But before you sit down at the table, you need to ask the right questions. The seven questions below are a general framework you can use with any provider you talk to.
This article is for general information; for contracts and legal matters you should get support from your own adviser.
1. Scope: what is included, what is left out, is it written down?
The most common dispute comes from the sentence “that was already your job”. Ask for the scope to be written item by item: for each heading such as servers, network, e-mail, user support and backup, it should be clear what is done and what is not done. How out-of-scope work will be handled should also be written down.
2. Who is the single point of contact, and how does a request flow?
Knowing whom to write to when a problem comes up is the visible face of the service. Ask whether there is a single point of contact, whether requests are recorded, and how you can see the status of open requests. A request made by phone and not put on record cannot be proven later.
3. How will the inventory and the handover be done?
You cannot manage what you do not know. Does the provider list the servers, licenses, accounts, network devices and backups together with you? Is this list handed over to you in writing? How elements found missing or undocumented during the handover will be handled should also be discussed up front.
4. Who holds access and permissions?
The outside team will touch your organization’s most sensitive accounts. Ask which person will work with which permissions, the reason for the permissions, and how permissions are closed when someone from the team leaves. Whether ownership of the administrator accounts stays with you is especially important.
5. Reporting: what, how often, with what content?
The report is what the service looks like from your side. The frequency and content of the report should be made clear in the contract; “we will inform you when needed” is not enough. Besides the work done, check whether the report also includes risks, capacity needs and recommendations. We add the restore test on request, if backup is within the service scope; we write its frequency and report in the quote. Ask your provider about this as well.
6. How will exit and data handover work?
Talking about the exit when entering a relationship may seem backwards, but it is one of the healthiest questions. How your data, documents and administrator access will be handed over to you when the service ends should be written in the contract. Find out beforehand who will carry out the handover process and in what form.
7. How will work be divided with the existing IT team?
If the organization has its own IT staff, this is the most critical subject. Is the outside team replacing them, or providing extra capacity alongside them? Who owns which task, where the lines of responsibility are drawn and who decides on jointly handled matters should be written down. An unclear division of work leads both sides to say “the other one is probably looking after it”.
Assessment
If your provider cannot give a clear, written answer to one of the seven questions, that may not be a sufficient reason on its own to rule that provider out; but it means a gap that must be resolved before the contract. By putting the answers side by side, you can compare different quotes with the same yardstick.
How to use the questions
You do not have to read the seven questions out one by one in the meeting. Before each meeting, write down your own answers: what is indispensable for you in the scope, which work do you definitely want to keep in-house, what information do you want to see, and how often? When you compare the provider’s answers with these notes, you quickly see where the difference is.
The same method works when you put quotes side by side. A simple three-column table for each question is enough: your expectation, the provider’s written answer, the point that remains open. Open points are the topics that must be closed before the contract; if something promised verbally is left blank in the table, it means there is no written assurance yet. Including your existing IT staff and management together in the decision process reduces the “this was not discussed” arguments that can come up later.
How are these questions met at 7 Tepe?
In our managed IT service, we write the scope item by item: what we take on and what stays outside is visible in the contract. We give a separate quote for out-of-scope work. At the onboarding stage we build the inventory together with you; we work with a single point of contact and a recorded request flow. We write the frequency and content of the report, and the exit terms, in the quote. For the definition of the service, you can look at the Managed IT Services page.
Also on this topic: New server or rented server? 5 criteria for the decision
Would you like to see a written scope for your organization’s IT?
