Changing ICT provider - advice please

[Ditto]

We are a rapidly growing charity supporting young people with emotional well-being and mental health. We have staff based permanently in schools, we support youth clubs, we have a large contract with NHS taking on a work for what was CAMHS.

 

We have a contract with a local ICT Services company, but there has been on-going dissatisfaction for some time with them. We are supposed to getting their 'gold' service but feel we aren't. The provider wants to increase our costs, partly due to our growth, but we feel every time we ask them to resolve issues, they just want more money or to sell us something.

So, we are looking at alternative suppliers.

Here is a brief outline of the services we need provided and supported.

 

 

• A cluster of PC's in the office with wired and wireless connectivity.
  
• Internet connectivity with virus protection, phishing and the usual security services. I guess we need filtering, monitoring etc. but unlike a school environment, we don't provide child internet access as a rule, but we would want 'guest' network.
  
• A small amount of printing/scanning on-site.
  
• Support for a significant number of remote workers, with work provided laptops.
  
• We are fully Microsoft 365 users, so we need licensing covered, ensuring any non-profit/charity discounts are fully achieved.
  
• Provision and support for a number of staff to have secure managed mobile phones.
  
• Full data security and DPA compliance.
  
• Ideally I'd like to see us achieve Cyber Essentials certification within 12 months.
  
• Probably a bit more that I've not thought of or not been made aware of.
  

 

 

So, what process should we go through and what questions should we be asking to ensure we get the best provider and value for money (not necessarily the cheapest!).

 

As a related question, our SLT have approached a company based in Bracknell that offer IT services, so if you work with a provider in Bracknell, I'm happy to PM who they are to see if they are the same to get some insight.

 

One final thought, I'm wondering if we should consider employing our own IT person and bringing it all in house. It would take a lot of work to convince the leadership, would require someone with broad and deep experience, but it is a good place to work and from other posts I suspect quite a few Edugeekers would be qualified. As a rule, we compete well or can exceed school salaries, but of course almost all staff are here for reasons beyond money, but the charity knows we all have bills to pay.

[TechMonkey]

Not done it myself, though we started but our provider bucked up. Process would be work out your actual requirements, maybe with some extras for them to quote on. So you would like phone and remote support in office hours, but get them to indicate what after hours support would cost.

I would get a tender document together with everything laid out very clearly, state your aims, what information you want from them (SLAs, quote, case studies, etc) and what they must have to apply (Cyber Essentials/+, ISO quals, etc) and then send the document out to the providers you want to talk to. Then take it from there. The providers should then get back in contact with you if they can fulfill your requirements and ask questions to fill in any gaps they want clarifying.

 

Then if you were really feeling thorough, work out the possible costs, benefits and drawbacks of an in house solution.

Edited November 5, 2021 by TechMonkey

[GTX]

try @VeryPC, This is right up their street

[KK20]

not capita. Seriously, dont use capita.

[Roberto]

Ok, so first things:

We are supposed to getting their 'gold' service but feel we aren't. The provider wants to increase our costs, partly due to our growth, but we feel every time we ask them to resolve issues, they just want more money or to sell us something.

 

What does ‘feel’ mean here? Presumably this “gold service” thing has a standard, ideally a SLA attached to it? You should be able to objectively measure the service you’re getting against the agreement and know, not ‘feel’ how well the service you’re getting corresponds to what you’re paying for.

 

Whether you’re paying for, or getting, what you need is an entirely different conversation, incidentally.

 

As for being asked to spend money whenever you ask them to resolve issues, again would need to qualify this; if your issue is that your laptop is always crashing and it’s a 6 year old clunker that you’re trying to run photoshop on then “buy a new laptop” is a reasonable response, and unlikely to be covered by a support contract. Similarly, ‘dead spots’ in the WiFi or a worn out/overtaxed server/NAS aren’t really support issues and wouldn’t normally be covered in a standard support contract.

 

Again, spending more money based on your growth, if you’re growing you’re probably going to generate more requests for support, more issues to fix, etc. I could easily justify a price increase depending on how things are structured.

 

• A cluster of PC's in the office with wired and wireless connectivity.
  
• Internet connectivity with virus protection, phishing and the usual security services. I guess we need filtering, monitoring etc. but unlike a school environment, we don't provide child internet access as a rule, but we would want 'guest' network.
  
• A small amount of printing/scanning on-site.
  
• Support for a significant number of remote workers, with work provided laptops.
  
• We are fully Microsoft 365 users, so we need licensing covered, ensuring any non-profit/charity discounts are fully achieved.
  
• Provision and support for a number of staff to have secure managed mobile phones.
  
• Full data security and DPA compliance.
  
• Ideally I'd like to see us achieve Cyber Essentials certification within 12 months.
  
• Probably a bit more that I've not thought of or not been made aware of.
  

 

Literally every point in that list would need substantial work to define where it is and where you need it to be, and the remedial actions necessary to get it there, before you could outsource it to a “support” company. There are MSPs (big ones like wavenet spring to mind) that can do a lot more than providing ’support’ who could give you an outsourced IT department to do this.

 

Your last two points, “full data security”, DPA and Cyber Essentials are whole organisation issues, not really IT issues.

 

One final thought, I'm wondering if we should consider employing our own IT person and bringing it all in house. It would take a lot of work to convince the leadership, would require someone with broad and deep experience, but it is a good place to work and from other posts I suspect quite a few Edugeekers would be qualified. As a rule, we compete well or can exceed school salaries, but of course almost all staff are here for reasons beyond money, but the charity knows we all have bills to pay.

 

This is a possibility, but keep in mind they may need to get help from an outsourced provider anyway. This could easily be an IT director/manager level bag of tasks, not a ‘technician’ role.

Edited November 5, 2021 by Roberto

[mikemcsharry]

one point - if you are a registered charity you shouldn't be paying anything like full, or even education, prices for software - also applies to a fair chunk of hardware.

Are you aware of this - https://www.charitydigitalexchange.org/

I was trustee for a charity and we saved a load of money using these folks

[CrootUK]

Give below a call, I’m sure they can tick all your boxes.

https://www.complete-it.co.uk/

[mikeprice]

I was involved in some things like this many years ago

 

 

Main thing is the SLA - make sure that you know exactly what happens when a problem crops up

I know it is obvious but for example

if a problems occurs

how long to a response - which may be a phone call to determine details

How long until someone starts looking at it

How long until someone starts looking at it seriously if the first person fails

what if serious action is required - what escalation procedures and how is all this communicated

 

 

Bear in mind that sometimes a problem may be so complex that it can;t be fixed quickly

e.g. many years ago the RAID system on our server failed - turned out that one part of a mirror pair had failed ages ago and not been spotted and the other half had died

and the whole thing was striped

 

and the backups were 'of less use than expected'

 

so you need to know what happens when this sort of stuff hits the fan - no-one can guarantee a full fix with x hours - so then what??

 

 

I have always found that being rather hard and getting everything written down in detail at teh start is important

you can start being reasonable and co-operative afterwards when you have the ability to start waving papers around and talking about compensation if necessary but decide to be helpful and understanding - as long as they are clearly doing their best

 

 

Always worked for me

[Ditto]

Some helpful comments in the replies, some missing the point I suspect, but thanks for the replies. I'm not directly involved in the current project, but when I see the SLT heading down a less than convincing route, I stick my oar in and ask questions and ultimately they realise I have a lot of experience and appreciate the input. As a couple of examples of the issues I am aware with the current provider.

 

Asset register - they haven't got a clue what IT hardware they have provided, what it is or where it is.

They provide new staff with laptops and every experience is different - all are variants of you can't just turn on, log in and use.

 

Neither of these issues should exist even if we were on a 'bronze' level of service, so whilst 'feel' is deliberately non-specific, there are of course specifics behind it.

 

Another example is WiFi - one of our leadership team is having a very poor connectivity and slow speeds using WiFi. The suggested solution of plugging in a physical cable doesn't seem to help. The situation in the office has not changed - if anything it usage has reduced due to increased remote working. The providers solution is to spend more money, but they haven't visited the site or investigated the underlying cause. For all I know, in spite of plugging in a cable connection, the laptop could still using the WiFi.

 

I agree SLA's are important, but in practice, I've never seen one where there is an attached penalty for failing to meet the SLA. So whilst it can help to put pressure on the supplier, unless it has a financial impact on the supplier, it has limitations. What we really want is a company that has such a positive pro-active approach, along with the relevant expertise, that SLAs shouldn't need to be referred too - perhaps that's unrealistic, but aiming high and falling just short is better than aiming low and achieving low.

 

Thanks for the digitalexchange link - I have referred that to that before and it is worth us checking the provider is getting the best deal, but I know like so many others, MS licensing is part science, part mystical magic. What is difficult for a charity like ours, is they don't have the expertise or experience needed to really go through a thorough procurement and to do all the hard slog of documenting all their needs. Ultimately I think they have to bite the bullet on this, but they rely on finding a provider that has a cultural fit with what the charity is doing and is supportive of that. We do get a proportion or pro-bono work done for us, but I think ICT (including tele-comms) is too core to expect that so it is an expense we have to manage.

[Squelch]

This could easily be an IT director/manager level bag of tasks, not a ‘technician’ role.

 

I agree with this, it sounds a lot like what many of us on here do for our schools. Offer a good enough salary and you should be able to find the right person.

Anyone taking on the role would still need to get third parties involved.