As a managed service provider (MSP), we feel that business is personal. It’s our responsibility to manage the IT services with which you run your business, and fulfilling that responsibility is very personal to us. The quality of your experience reflects the expertise, strategy, and culture of our business and who we are as a company. But who we are is also reflected by who we choose to do business with.
We don’t just look for clients. We look for partners. We know partner is an overused term. But here are 10 things we mean by it:
- As partners, we recognize we have to be transparent with each other. We need to know what you’re doing, what you want to be doing, and how you want to be doing it.
- We have to commit to keeping lines of communication open. We must be willing to pick up the phone when warranted, to share. Our communication needs to be clear, consistent, and continual.
- Nothing we do together will be set-it-and-forget-it. Circumstances change. Needs change. Opportunities, liabilities, and capabilities change.
- We need to have clear, shared expectations of each other that include roles, responsibilities, and accountability for fulfilling those responsibilities.
- We need to share champions. Someone in your organization will be our champion, our advocate. And someone in our organization will be yours.
- We need to share ideas. As long as both of us are willing to think creatively and to solve problems collaboratively, the likelihood of positive outcomes is very high.
- We need the desire for success to be mutual.
- We need to recognize we might disagree at times. But tension and conflict can be good. And resolving tension and conflict always results in progress.
- Change can be good or bad, depending on the way it’s managed. We need to work together to harness it and to manage it constructively.
- We need to recognize technology can be a catalyst for change. With new technology, star performers might not be so stellar anymore. On the other hand, performers that might have been considered marginal may very well become stars.
How Personal is Personal?
When we sat down with one of our team members to discuss this topic, here’s what he had to say:
“I don’t need to know your hat size or your sleeve length. But I know what kinds of dogs our partners have. They know what kinds of dogs I have. We share stories and information about our backgrounds, about our families, about our likes and dislikes. Is that strictly business? No. But getting to know each other helps to establish the trust that makes doing business together easier and more enjoyable.”
We take IT personally. We take the businesses of our clients personally. And we take their success and their satisfaction personally. Does that make us a little different? Yes, it does, and we’re proud of that difference.
