Managed IT Services
What Is A Managed Services Provider (MSP)?
To some, Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a dirty word, synonymous with Used Car Salesman and Penny Stock Broker! And unfortunately, we’re seeing more and more the types of unhealthy relationships providers have with their clients that caused us to start our business in the first place. We’ve all heard the expression before “relationships are built on trust”, right? We see good and honest business owners endow generous amounts of trust to their MSPs with the expectation that they will take care of problems the business owners are totally clueless on in most cases! As you can imagine, it doesn’t always work out that way, and we see numerous conflicts of interest constantly at play when we are called in to diagnose a prospective client’s network environment.
We have a different theory at Koala Networks. Our most valuable resource is our expertise that we lend our clients through the use of our time, not our relationships with vendors within our industry we have built over the years. Our responsibility is to our clients—leveraging those industry relationships to lower their monthly commitments & enabling them to further their business development. At Koala Networks, we make a commitment to every client to offer full transparency up front in our project work and ongoing servicing, to pass along every discount we are offered by vendors, to never resell at a markup, and to empower our clients to do as much or as little of our job themselves as they want. We strive to eliminate as many conflicts of interest as we can, which is why we also encourage clients to utilize us on an as needed basis and empower them to have as much or as little involvement in their own IT successes as they choose to have.
How Does Koala Networks Approach Managed IT Services?
At Koala Networks, we wear many hats (literally usually!). When we onboard a client, we build a full-service, long-term IT business plan for each client. We often build, or re-build if needed, their network environment from the ground up, put redundant data backups into place, ensure their email solution is the best fit for the cost and migrate when needed, create the ability to work remotely for employees that benefit from it, and set up phone solutions. We are highly focused on cost and budget throughout this entire process because, in most cases, we function as a virtual CIO/CTO (or assistant to the CIO/CTO) for our clients.
Once all new setup and/or project work is complete and business is back to normal, managed IT services are a lot less noticeable. Day-to-day IT management is more along the lines of help desk support (both remote and on-site), managed software and operating systems updates, anti-virus and real-time threat detection, and any other break that needs fixing!
Over the years, we also sit in on any operations meeting we are asked to and help plan out the your business IT needs for the next 1-3 years, manage your vendor relationships for you, and can help you analyze bids for any other tech jobs you may need to hire for (like wiring your building). To us, the most important thing is the relationship with our clients and we strive to always go above and beyond in whatever way reduces their stress and work in our field of expertise.