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Boss calls me in. “Hey, we have a firm, too small to have their own IT department, too skittish to trust an MSP on face value. They want to borrow you, as an independent consultant, to just run everything by, have in the few project meetings they need, etc.” Ummm… “Oh, and it comes with a raise, as we know its outside your scope.” SWEET! Okay!

This question is primarily for the MSP crowd. I know I’ve had a bad experience… or two… in the past with the big, bad wolf MSPs. So, I’m being super vigilant not to have any stupid bias. You boys and girls may have handled this before, so I’m looking for your experience in this. Is there preferable interaction? Do like to have everything questioned infront of the client, or bring it up on the side and then bring the resolution / conclusion up infront later? Is there anything that drives you nuts? (Outside of ambushing. I try not to do that by default because I hate when I get ambushed.)

I understand stuff like SLAs, contracted services and such. That stuff is easy. Just trying to make sure I don’t make these poor folks feel like they just had Rambo air-dropped on them mid-proposal.

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Your boss says they want a consultant at the start of the thread. Then you talk about SLAs, contracted services. So I am a bit worried.

A consultant is not an MSP. You need to clarify what you are to them.

Also, they are paying your boss for your time, so you need to clarify the scope of what that is with your boss, anything outside of scope might mean your boss needs to up the charge.

Whatever you do. don’t champion your customer over the boss. It won’t end well.

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I would recommend going in and first understanding that the company wants and needs, make sure to keep those two things separated and let that company know that as well. Then do an assessment of the company and make notes. Bring up concerns you have of their setup, with a priority of what’s critical and what isn’t, provide an estimate of what it would take to adjust those and let them know what the risk is of not fixing them. Document! It’s important for the company to understand what those issues are and make the decision of what is fixed and when. Not everyone can get everything fixed now, or some are willing to take risks, but as long as you document all that, it keeps you safe.

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My apologies if I wasn’t clear enough. Basically, I’d be the company’s IT liaison between the company and the MSP. Basically making sure they don’t get sold solutions that are dramatically more than what they need, stuff like that.

(Edit: Basically, someone who doesn’t have a horse in the race, so the owner can feel a little more at ease that he’s not getting the work over. He sounds (slightly) paranoid.)

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Ah, that’s similar to what I’m doing now. Fortunately, my advice doesn’t change much. It’s important to know what the company has now, know what their short and long term goals and plan for that. With your position, you’ll be vetting the MSP’s solutions and correspondence to the company in a way they can understand, and then also letting the MSP know what’s going on with the company and what their needs and wants are to coordinate appropriate.

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Just to be 100% clear here. YOU are their MSP now :slight_smile:

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No no no. I am their “Independent IT Management Consultant”. :smiley: I even got a shiny little title! Because we all know how people in IT care about titles! LOL. Met with the owner this morning. Very nice woman but is completely aware of her IT nativity and that, in the past, led to some poor decisions and waste of capital. So, they went with a trusted ‘ally’ this time to make sure she doesn’t do that again.

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Actually an MSP would not have a horse in the race either. I think you are talking about a reseller?

Types of IT Service Providers

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That’s what we do, everyone calls us an MSP.

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Well, the MSP has a horse in the race with their SLAs, contract terms, things they cover, etc. From what I understand, and she wouldn’t give me specifics, which was fine, her past dealings was a fast talking MSP that sold her the “Platinum Package” (which should always be a sign to run away) that had things like 24x7 2-hour SLA support for End Users, Monitored everything, plus some reselling. And by the time the cost savings became cost costing, it was too late.

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So here is a big question… are you doing the overseeing of IT for them? If so, aren’t you just an MSP making the decisions? If you are purely a business person overseeing relationships with vendors, do they need you to know IT?

You need to figure out your role, it sounds like maybe it is not clear yet.

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Ah the joys of IT terminology! lol. I consider MSP a shop that someone employs to handle SysAd, IT Projects and Support Desk. Am I off?

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none of that is IT, though, that’s all business side.

My opinion is, if you have an SLA, you’ve already gone down the road of a bad relationship. SLAs are not things you use in healthy ones.

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Around SW people use it to mean anyone not internal IT staff. but in the real world, MSP are MANAGED SERVICE providers, they have to package a managed service. You are talking about a more general IT outsourcer. Which is exactly what YOU are in this situation too.

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So, my role is:

To review, research and discuss any and all projects subject to contractual obligations between and . In addition, to act as a managerial advisor role to properly educate the ownership on the projected impact of said projects. Lastly, to act as an informational advocate (I do not have contractual powers) between the company and the service provider.

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So your role is ONLY to be a legal, not an IT, consultant to management ONLY for the purpose of overseeing the portion of the relationship that I think should not exist?

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The information provided here is pretty good information, but you need to specifically find out what you’re expected to do. Your boss should provide this to you in writing. If I were an general IT outsourcer, I would want my resources to discuss in private with my client what was proposed and why it fits or doesn’t.

Not because it’ll start a heated discussion of the proposal, but so the proposer isn’t there. Trying to respond, and come up with solutions to hypothetical scenarios.

There’s the MSP, the Client, and the IT Outsourcer, only 2 parties should meet at a time, and the Outsourcer and MSP IMO should never meet.

There’s no need, they are there to be non-biased.

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And project review. But yes. I make sure the IT Provider isn’t trying to sell them an entire data farm when they can cloud host a single blade and make sure everything is done properly according to agreed contract.

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Things that I “Generally” do not agree with in interactions between vendors and IT Service Providers:

  1. SLA. Because this is insane. I’ll write a paper on why. But fundamentally if you need an SLA for things, the relationship has already failed.
  2. Projects. Can’t always be helped but almost always. Projects require heavy scope and often SLAs and are not how IT or businesses work. They create complex and complicated relationships that don’t work well and are expensive up front without benefit.
  3. Contracts. Yes you might need them, but they can be very light. Make relationships where both parties are working together, not bound together by legal contract to keep them from flying apart.

Not that IT oversight is not needed, but it sounds like your role is there based on bad relationship assumptions and, quite honestly, you have a big horse in the race to keep things unhealthy as that is why you are needed, right?

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This is good EXCEPT…

  1. Is the other ITSP being paid to provide good advice? If so, why, they have you.
  2. You are now telling them what NOT to buy, that doesn’t work. If you are in the position of knowing what is okay, why not tell them what to do instead of holding onto that information and making them get bad sales advice.
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