Congratulations on making the switch to Multi IT & Telephony Solutions! The Strategic Solutions Team is delighted you committed, and we can’t wait to deliver on our promise to ignite your digital transformation. As technology is further integrated across your organisation, you develop increased operating leverage to deliver superior value to your clients. This will not happen overnight, so we must set expectations and establish a meeting cadence to plan the work and work the plan. Strategic Solutions Objectives: The Top Five 1 - To build a strong, trusted partnership Every new client we acquire has at least one thing in common: the desire for a better relationship. While Multi IT & Telephony Solutions leverages a lot of innovative technology that smaller IT providers and in-house IT departments cannot afford, it’s not our primary differentiator. We tend to attract clients who value discernment. This character trait inspires us to sit on the same side of the table as our clients and truly understand their long-term goals before making recommendations. Multi IT & Telephony Solutions is so much more than technical support and project services. You probably got variations of that somewhere else, but now you’re here. It’s time to get to know each other and broach the topic of setting up an IT Steering Committee. This is the best way to make sure key stakeholders within your organization are part of the conversation, at least on a high level. 2 - To identify business conditions or issues for improvement This phase of the journey should be called Discovery 2.0. We already have a detailed snapshot of your IT systems from our comprehensive sales/solution development process and onboarding. Now we need to address the moving picture. And team up with you to talk through the priorities. Technology is ever-changing, and a lot can happen in the month or two since onboarding began. Our support team has been tracking all of these new developments through the following categories of ticket requests: End-user technical supportIncident managementAlert responseProblem managementTechnical questions or requestsMinor change requests When you submit a ticket to our Service Desk by calling, emailing, or using Multi IT & Telephony Solutions Chat or Portal, you are dialled into a team that is maintaining the existing operational state of your technology and working on your requests in real-time. They are also proactively responding to incidents created by automated monitoring platforms to solve issues before problems arise and force you to call the help desk. Both activities unearth a massive volume of business intelligence which the Strategic Solutions Team uses to help you make data-driven decisions related to: Analysing gaps in your business.Calculating the risk and impact of the findings.Taking the significant first step to keeping your budgeting and planning process on track with a detailed roadmap. 3 - To ensure your IT infrastructure meets minimum standards for compliance with industry best practices and applicable regulatory controls Multi IT & Telephony Solutions takes a holistic approach to your digital estate and its symbiotic relationship to your particular industry’s regulation and compliance guidelines. One hundred percent compliance is impossible since government policy changes tend to create a moving goalpost. That’s why current, standards-based infrastructure and documentation is your best defense. You decrease the likelihood of a disaster or data breach and lower your liability because you have evidence of due care. Your Strategic Solutions Team provides Quarterly Executive Summaries and simplified scoring of assets under management and security monitoring. The following snippet is from a new client. There’s nowhere else to go but up from here. And there’s no time like the present for client collaboration. 4 - To assist with long-term planning and strategy to improve IT Return on Investment (ROI) over time The previous section has an exhibit with a line item for Server and Network Warranty that only scored a 33%. Warranties apply to mission-critical network systems such as web servers, mail servers, switches, and routers. These devices affect multiple users, and therefore business can be seriously impacted when one of these critical services fails. It is essential to have valid warranties for these critical systems as their warranties usually offer expedited resolutions. Because this section failed to meet our expectations, further details were automatically added to the report. Two expired Windows Servers provide a perfect example of technology that will be monitored, analysed, and reimagined through the course of any client relationship to improve ROI. And the reimagining will probably happen sooner as opposed to later. With the worldwide exodus to the cloud, mentioning ROI in the same sentence with bare metal servers is starting to sound conspicuously counterintuitive. 5 - To increase your organization’s overall Operational Maturity Score (OMS) Your OMS is a ranking between 0 and 100. And it goes beyond rating the sophistication of your IT operations. Its calculation is based on many factors: How well developed are your organisation’s documented policies and procedures?Does your organisation have well-defined one, three, and 5-year business plans?Do you have a formal budgeting process?Is your IT environment in compliance with industry best practices?Is your IT security posture sufficient to protect against the ever-evolving threat landscape?Is your staff operating at peak efficiency?Are you in compliance with legally mandated regulatory requirements?Are there other high-risk conditions that could result in interruption of business operations? Companies with higher operational maturity scores grow faster, are more profitable, and are more attractive for sales generation, recruiting, investment, or M&A activity. Our Strategic Solutions team will benchmark your OMS and track it over time so you can see the long-term benefits of our unique approach. Next Steps! The following Advisory services are included in your Managed Services Agreement: Strategic Business ReviewsParticipation in Board or Steering Committee meetingsStrategic Roadmaps (key recommendations categorised by business risk and impact)Rough Order of Magnitude cost estimates to help with budgetingIf your organisation requires an expanded scope of Strategic Advisory engagement, you are entitled to priority booking of additional hours at a reduced rate. Strategic Business reviews and QBRs provide a great platform for business growth and allowing everyone to get on the same page. If you would like to discuss your business in further detail, get in touch with us online or on the details below: Johannesburg – +27(0)11 435 0450, sales@multi.co.zaCape Town – +27(0)21 879 1950, sales@multi.co.zaDurban – +27(0)31 331 0735, sales@multi.co.za Namibia – +264(0)81 353 9702, sales@multi.com.na

When the Trust Factor Starts to Erode When trust is gone, all of your doubts seem to snowball into a never-ending stream of questions and complaints: Does anyone at my MSP know how to follow up via phone or email?Isn’t this the tenth time I’ve submitted a ticket about recurring issues with OneDrive?Where is my contract? The service is supposed to be all you can eat, but I’m seeing extra charges on this month’s invoice.I’ve added twenty people, and it doesn’t look like I’m getting any kind of volume discount.I used to talk to the owner all the time. It seems like she’s disappeared since they sold out to that copier company from Cape Town. Are you losing confidence? You’re entitled. I’ve met hundreds of people like you over the last 13 years. MSP services are relatively new and getting them right is part art and part science. Especially finding ideal provider/client matches. At Multi IT & Telephony Solutions, we may be an MSP, but our first objective is to help you figure out where you are having issues so you can research solutions with eyes wide open without salespeople stalking you through InMail on LinkedIn. As your guide, we’ve assembled four simple sections highlighting significant areas of concern that ruin most IT support relationships. 1 - Major System Fails According to Veritis, “45% of companies reported downtime from hardware failure.” System disruption includes but is not limited to servers, workstations, and networking equipment like switches, firewalls, and data backup appliances. Each node is similar to the patchwork in a figurative digital quilt. Dynamic Technologies cites five more statistics for widely reported causes of total unplanned downtime: Loss of power (35%)Software failure (34%)Data corruption (24%)External security breaches (23%)Accidental user error (20%) Are you exhausted yet? Up to 60% of all data backups are incomplete. I’ve been advising SMBs on technology solutions since 2003 and don’t have any doubts about the validity of these figures. Astonishingly, at least half of the new clients I’ve ever acquired didn’t make a move until they experienced a significant disaster. Are you comfortable with the old saying, ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’? No judgment if you are, you’re not alone. 2 - Slow Response Times When you have a deadline and something isn’t working, five minutes seems like five hours. And if tech support is slow to respond, you’re not only frustrated, your productivity is also taking a nosedive. Slow response times have many root causes, and the reasons are related to every section in this article. The following questions will help you decide which considerations are most relevant to your company: Are your workstations standardised and up to date? (Make, Model, Year, etc.)What about the warranties, are they current?Can each member of your team open tickets with your MSP, or do you have one individual running point on behalf of everyone else?Are you running one file share on a traditional server and another in the cloud?What percentage of your team is working from home on personal computers shared by other members of their family?Does everybody have the correct M365 license, so it integrates with their specific line of business applications?Do you have any way of verifying if your users are storing data on unauthorized cloud services?Is your team using Multi-Factor Authentication?What percentage of your team is allowing automatic updates to take place? (Hint: a lot of people put this off because no one likes to reboot when there’s a deadline.)Is everyone prompted to log into the network with a user ID and a unique password?Does your MSP’s Service Level Agreement (SLA) have explicit language about response times and the specific conditions that make time-bound guarantees possible? There are so many other valid questions. Hopefully, these widespread concerns will stimulate your curiosity to dig deeper. Now for something fairly obvious but frequently tolerated. Many companies are in a constant state of tug of war with their MSP. For instance, MSPs with higher levels of operating maturity will advise the client to have up to date, standardized equipment. This combination maximizes stability and is less prone to malfunction. When an MSP is trying to serve a business with a lower level of operating maturity, the client may be reluctant to invest. “Upgrade the WIFI network? My budget is all gone paying for you guys to support me!” At the same time, it’s not uncommon for the business to expect the MSP to respond whenever there’s a problem. Over time, the issues will grow in frequency, and the MSP will never be able to intervene rapidly enough to keep the client happy. Or recover. This is commonly called “death by a thousand cuts.” 3 - Regulation & Compliance Gaps The previous section is a perfect icebreaker for regulation and compliance. It’s doubtful, the company in my hypothetical example would be a good prospect for a compliance upgrade. If they can’t make the budgetary justification to replace essential equipment, their MSP’s recommendations to consider a more formal commitment to any of the following popular frameworks would no doubt fall on deaf ears: HIPAAPCI DSSNIST SP 800-53NIST Cybersecurity FrameworkHITRUSTISO 27000 SeriesNERC 1300ANSI/ISA 62443 To add a little intrigue and cost to the discussion (Sorry!), your organization can be compliant with the latest regulatory guidelines, have dynamic, sustainable systems, and still not achieve 100% security. It’s not attainable. No matter how advanced technology gets, over 95% of data breaches are caused by human error. Is your provider promoting compliance initiatives you don’t embrace? Or can’t afford? That’s enough to inspire some businesses to find an MSP with lower standards. I once worked with a real estate investment client who had merged with another company two years prior, and they were still operating on two separate file servers. One had their domain on a bare metal server. The other had their domain in a private cloud running desktop as a service. They were very successful but very set in their ways. The firm refused to merge their file shares or even attend training on desktop as a service (which they were adamant about keeping as a carryover from their previous provider). It was an operational nightmare and a compliance mess. They didn’t care. Some things were never meant to be. Are you ready to get more intentional about hardening your systems for better business performance and evolving compliance challenges? Make sure your MSP is not only versed in your particular compliance requirements but also has documentation to show they are compliant as well. It’s not enough to take care of your systems. You now have to worry about everybody else. “Third-party vendors were responsible for two out of every three data breaches,” according to The Internal Auditors Research Foundation. 4 - The Absence of an IT Strategy One, three, and five are very significant numbers to consider when thinking about your business goals and the value of strategic IT. Has your MSP asked to review your business plan? Have you offered to share your one, three, and five-year targets with them? A reactive provider is playing checkers with your digital estate. A proactive one is running a chess match and looks ahead to: Develop your technology frameworkMake a strong business case for supporting the foundation with a budgetEnsure all endpoints are standardized, scalable, fault-tolerant, and moveable as more and more technology is shifted to the cloudBuild a coalition with your Technology Planning Committee to reduce single points of failure and keep all relevant stakeholders in the know (and energised)Plan for changes like office expansions, hiring upswings, work from home initiatives, partnership changes, mergers & acquisitions, regulation, and compliance readiness, and moreReview and revise the plans on a routine basis with supporting documentation Documentation is conspicuously underdelivered in the MSP space. If your MSP has fallen behind on this detail, it’s tough to catch up. Some providers even fall behind at the very beginning. We’re talking day one. Learn More: The Truth About MSP Onboarding The developers of IT Glue have somehow managed to make the dry topic of documentation engaging and funny. Learn More: IT Glue YouTube Commercial Do you ever read compelling articles about AWS and Azure and wonder why your IT provider hasn’t brought any of these innovations to your attention? That’s a subtle warning sign you may need more strategic guidance. Without a trusted advisor leading you with a strategy-first mindset, everything else in your IT environment will produce symptoms that sour the relationship. Where To Go From Here? Figuring out exactly why you need to make a move takes time, focus, and clarity. Are you willing to read multiple MSP service level agreements to fully understand what is included for a fixed fee and what isn’t?Do the MSPs have a clearly defined technical support request process?Is your team clear on the differences between a mom and pop provider, a boutique, and a large provider?If you are growing, are you willing to pay more? The standard economies of scale logic doesn’t apply to MSPs because they require more resources and time to serve companies with expanding headcounts. I hope you are further along in your quest to develop the right criteria for finding an MSP you can trust. Get in touch with us online or on the details below: Johannesburg – +27(0)11 435 0450, sales@multi.co.zaCape Town – +27(0)21 879 1950, sales@multi.co.zaDurban – +27(0)31 331 0735, sales@multi.co.za Namibia – +264(0)81 353 9702, sales@multi.com.na

What changes and challenges are happening in your business? A number of factors inspire companies to analyse their IT support: office moves, sales growth, adding headcount, quality of service issues, data breaches, compliance concerns, lack of proactive guidance, or strategy. Are you getting a lot of user complaints? Working from home and using cloud applications doesn’t always work as planned. Maybe you’re a well-funded startup or just doing some due diligence to make sure your current arrangement is delivering the competitive advantage you deserve. Is your provider or small IT department slow to respond? (No offense if you’re this person.) At Multi IT & Telephony Solutions, we help businesses just like yours solve IT problems every day. And one of the most common questions we hear from prospective clients is, 'should I insource or outsource my IT?' While Multi IT’s only two offerings are managed IT and co-managed IT, we’re realists and understand our model is not always the best option for every business. The goal of this article is to show you a variety of business solutions and help you find the right fit. Which IT Support Plan is Best For Your Small to Midsize Business or Nonprofit? Do-It-Yourself ITDedicated IT StaffHourly Break/Fix ServicesManaged IT Services Do-It-Yourself IT Support You, or a colleague, take ownership of managing all of your technology in addition to your primary job duties. Do-It-Yourself IT falls squarely in the spare time category. What Are The Pros? Doing it yourself saves money if you can’t afford to pay someone else to do this. Business owners with fewer than five employees find this hard cost reduction irresistible. Some people like IT and enjoy tinkering. I know a closing attorney who has a server stack in his office. He also reads software manuals on long flights. You get a sense of control, calling all the shots on the technology used to grow your business. For organizations with relatively simple technology needs, you enjoy independence and immediacy. Applications like O365, Vonage, Gmail, and DropBox give smaller organizations many easy to manage subscription-based, cloud solutions. What Are The Cons? Doing it yourself increases soft costs. As business demands increase, self-managed IT will require more of a time commitment. Security breaches and data loss due to failed backups are most prevalent with this model. As you expand, you may start to lose control but not know it. Applications are easy to buy online. However, many have confusing control panels that look like the cockpit of a Boeing 747. O365 has a host of features that your average person will not know how to set up. For example, user email accounts in O365 require configuration for automatic backup. Missing this detail can equate to years of lost data. Cloud applications from different companies may be relatively simple to operate independently. Complexity arises when multiple applications need to be integrated, making you more dependent on disparate parties. Unless they cooperate promptly, the immediacy factor evaporates. Executives who self-resolve IT problems - conservatively speaking - spend an average of two hours a week or 100 hours a year on this activity. This is not enough time to keep systems healthy and secure. Self-resolvers focus almost exclusively on breakdowns instead of leveraging automated monitoring and maintenance tools which keep systems working optimally. When handling your own IT needs, you waste valuable time working in the business rather than on the business. This model typically leaves everyone in the business to fend for themselves. This can often lead to users signing up for their own services, known as “shadow IT.” According to KnowBe4, Shadow IT is responsible for 33% of all cyber-attacks. Finally, if you’re not a cloud specialist, system engineer, network engineer, or security professional undergoing regular training and earning updated certifications, it’s impossible to keep up. Dedicated IT Support Staff Your team includes one or several full-time IT specialists who manage infrastructure: servers, cloud applications, user help desk, network, firewall, backup and disaster recovery, telecom, and vendor management. Wikipedia Definition of Typical Services Application specialists are a different breed from the infrastructure team. They have the skill sets to provide a line of business application support, software development, project, and program management. The size and technology needs of your organisation will dictate the combination you require. What Are The Pros? The larger your headcount, the more likely you’ll have users with varying levels of competency and patience. Have you met many Type A personalities who politely suffer a printer error or forgotten password when a deadline is looming? If your business has over 100 people, an in-house IT team consisting of infrastructure and application specialists can be convenient for grab-by-the-collar, just-in-time help requests. Technology adoption and enthusiasm are also affected by the age of your team. Younger employees, who have grown up around technology, are going to jump right in. Older employees may be less engaged. I have a good friend whose father retired ten years early because he didn’t like using email. A robust in-house presence also makes sense if IT is your core business and service delivery depends on a unique IT application that requires full-time support. You may even get team members who want to work in your particular industry because it’s part of their life’s mission. They wish to stop human trafficking, promote better healthcare outcomes, or help people attain financial freedom. What could be better than passionate employees who become a valuable part of your culture? What Are The Cons? Full-time IT employees are easily accessible to everyone, including demanding users who may not follow standard support request protocols. When stronger personalities push and shove, attention can get diverted from higher priority issues and projects. This political dynamic creates strife, hinders your operating efficiency, and could increase your legal exposure. Would you rather have someone help a forceful executive format a PowerPoint or finish patching a mission-critical web infrastructure? An unpatched web server triggered the Equifax data breach. In-house IT professionals are also likely to be on call 24/7 or be in a rotation to share this duty with others. Their workdays can be unpredictable. Vacations and sick leave can also create gaps. And it’s not uncommon for executives to expect assistance with home computing needs after-hours or on weekends. These factors lead to burnout and staff turnover. Cloud specialists, system engineers, network engineers, project managers, CISOs, CIOs, and CTOs, are expensive resources. An IT Help Desk/Technical Support Professional can command R630,000 a year while an IT Manager can fetch R1,000,000.  Not only is the median pay for IT professionals more than double the salary of all other Southern African occupations, but compensation also rises every year and boasts an unemployment rate of 2.8% versus the national average of 10.2% in the industry. Strong IT professionals are always in high demand. Recruiters call them regularly with lucrative financial incentives to jump ship. So the ambitious ones tend to leave for new challenges while the less enterprising ones stick around. When key personnel leave, they depart with institutional knowledge. Quality documentation is not always maintained and shared. Other IT professionals see knowledge as job security and don’t want to give away the keys to the kingdom. Are you comfortable with either scenario? If you have concerns around single points of failure and risk, I can’t imagine your answer would be yes. How do you feel about having to manage and mentor IT people? Many businesses don’t have this expertise. Many companies also have no idea if their IT people are doing a good job or how to evaluate their performance. Finally, your expenses climb when you add the cost of employee benefits, training, real estate space, and the hardware/software required to build out in-house IT management infrastructure. Hourly or Break/Fix IT Support Break/Fix IT is prevalent in the small business market. The model is very similar to that of a plumber, electrician, or HVAC vendor. Clients pay for services “by the drink” on an as-needed basis. An IT consultant is essentially “on-call” to solve technical problems as they arise. The mentality is very similar to Do-It-Yourself IT, except you recognize the need to get help from a more qualified third-party. Hourly IT support is a cottage industry with hundreds of sole proprietors in any major city, including national brands. What Are The Pros? Break/fix IT support doesn’t require any upfront financial commitments, making it cost-effective for companies with fewer than ten people, basic systems, and minimal reliance on technology. In some cases, monthly retainers, fees for block-time agreements, or budgeted hours apply. Some business owners are so practical they can’t fathom paying for something unless it’s broken. The client maintains a tighter control on spending and is empowered to authorize all activities and associated costs, including selecting different vendors for different IT initiatives: Internet, phone system, AV, etc. Break/fix might be all you can afford when getting started. Or it could be a convenient band aid while an IT resource is unavailable or being hired/replaced. What Are The Cons? There is a direct correlation between reactive hourly services and less favorable business outcomes. What can go wrong? The hourly resource is seldom available the exact moment you need them. Break/Fix resources don’t have the luxury of using pre-installed professional services automation or 24/7 remote monitoring and management software, which puts them at a severe disadvantage. Since they lack visibility, data insights, and control of all the moving parts of your IT systems, they have to begin every encounter from the ground up. In many cases, they’re learning on the job. Their technical expertise is limited to tactical fixes rather than understanding how individual technologies fit and should perform within a broader system. This means they lack the visibility to identify the root causes of problems. Your business can be disrupted when problems emerge outside standard business hours. And since system alerts will not be activated automatically, you must identify the issue and report it to the provider. Break/fix service does not come with Service Level Agreements or guaranteed response times which leads to extended wait times and escalated emergency fees. This is a less mature business model consisting of smaller providers and independent contractors. Both usually have limited resources and domain expertise across interdependent technology disciplines: network, cloud, security. In today’s connected world, you can’t afford to have gaps. The hourly resource can also go on vacation, have other clients to visit, go on maternity leave, or exit the business without warning. Is this single point of failure worth the risk? Multi IT & Telephony Solutions once received a call on a Saturday from a frantic CPA who suffered a catastrophic data loss. Her 10-year old small business server had crashed, and the various break/fix vendors she had used over the years were nowhere to be found—ditto on any backups or network diagrams. Smart CPA. Bad IT decision-maker. Managed IT Services & Support Managed IT Services is a fully outsourced solution for small and midsize businesses to enjoy a portfolio of people, processes, and technology on a fixed-fee basis. It’s a subscription model where you essentially rent fractional ownership of a corporate IT department instead of building it and managing it yourself. The managed services model initially gained popularity in the early ’90s in the large enterprise market, which produced innovations that are now available to much smaller entities. What Are The Pros? Best in class IT providers put a great deal of emphasis on understanding your strategy before making recommendations. This consultative approach sets the stage to optimise the performance of your environment. They can also lower your exposure to downtime, data loss, theft, or intrusion. Managed IT gives you flexibility for 10 or 1000 employees. It can be scaled up or down. Do you need fully managed IT this quarter and Co-Managed IT next quarter? Either service can be expanded or contracted in short order Outsourcing replaces capital expense with operating expenses. Instead of paying an in-house IT Director over R1,000,000 a year to serve a 50-person firm, an MSP with as few as ten employees can offer a more comprehensive array of services for R600,000 per year. 24/7 remote monitoring and proactive maintenance also included, have the net effect of issue prevention. Many full-service MSPs subscribe to client management tools with annual costs in the range of R5,000,000 to R7,500,000. These expenses are easy to justify in an outsourced model because 50-100 different clients pay fixed fees that more than offset the MSP’s operating expenditures. IT providers have cross-trained specialists on staff with deep expertise in constantly changing technology services and compliance frameworks. They stay ahead of the minutia, so you don’t have to. Like every industry these days, managed IT services is a competitive field. It’s not uncommon for providers to structure agreements with 60-day out clauses. By making the contract terms less threatening, businesses can move forward without the pressure to make a 12, 24, or 36-month commitment. What if you hate your IT provider? Hiring an MSP simplifies operations. Instead of devoting employees to co-ordinating vendors, evaluating, deploying, and supporting technology, you outsource these functions to a single reliable company to manage your computing infrastructure. This frees your team to focus on core business needs and strategic initiatives. What Are The Cons? The managed IT space has very low barriers to entry with hundreds of options in any given market. Many operators use the buzzword “MSP” very loosely. And some are more professional than others. You’ve got national companies who advertise on billboards as well as “MSPs” being run out of basements by four guys in their NASCAR pajamas. Your cybersecurity may be at risk. You can’t count on every vendor to follow standards and best practices or provide leadership and inspiration for you to do the same. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. Take for example the ransomware attack that hit a Durban MSP and affected 100 of its clients. Some companies don’t like giving up any control to an MSP. Multi IT & Telephony Solutions once signed a 12-month agreement with a client who wanted to transition from in-house IT to outsourced IT. They were paying us R70,000 a month and never allowed us to install remote monitoring and management software on their servers. New MSP services would be a lot easier to roll out in the small and midsized business sector if there were also a budgetary line item for Change Management. Larger companies can afford change management, while smaller organisations cannot. When Coca-Cola’s IT department initiates a laptop refresh with new Microsoft Azure services, they hire management consulting companies to handle the pivot. Doing the same project on a much smaller scale with a privately held, 40-person insurance brokerage could easily turn into a hot mess. Smaller businesses may change IT providers and not change the deep-seated organisational behaviours that caused their previous IT vendor relationship to sour. If you hire any sort of professional services organization - MSP, Law Firm, CPA, Financial Advisor - and refuse to follow their recommendations, the relationship will not last. A successful partnership requires the provider to have an advisory relationship with the client’s primary influencers and/or IT Steering Committee. These key stakeholders need to be committed to meeting on a regular basis to share strategy, business goals, best practices, and approve projects that will impact the business. Some clients enthusiastically embrace replacing old or unsupported hardware and implementing cyber security best practices. Other clients won’t upgrade consumer-grade Wireless Access Points - even if they frequently lose connectivity, are unsecured, and required to process credit card transactions. If you assign one person to exclusively manage the relationship - including running interference on every support ticket - you create an information vacuum, a quality of service bottleneck, and a single point of failure. Each has a negative effect on your business continuity. MSPs can’t predict or prevent every one of your unplanned technology costs. Some MSPs may be incapable of learning your business or be a bad fit for your culture. With some IT companies, you’re just a number. Where To Go From Here? Figuring out what works best for you requires due diligence. And you may experience a few setbacks along the way. Multi IT & Telephony Solutions has kissed a few proverbial frogs in our quest to find the right digital marketing partner. We’ve had to change hardware and software vendors when their business practices and pricing models no longer made sense. We used to own servers and lease space in a data centre. Now we use managed services specifically designed for managed services providers. And we didn’t outsource all of our HR until 2020! We know what you’re going through because we’re learning and doing new things every day. Get in touch with us online or on the details below: Johannesburg – +27(0)11 435 0450, sales@multi.co.zaCape Town – +27(0)21 879 1950, sales@multi.co.zaDurban – +27(0)31 331 0735, sales@multi.co.za Namibia – +264(0)81 353 9702, sales@multi.com.na