In 1789, Benjamin Franklin wrote in a letter that “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
After being in the IT business for 39 years, I will add one more certainty; in our industry nothing is as important as up-to-date, accurate, and secure documentation.
When you engage with an IT services firm, you place a great deal of trust in that organization. You trust them to keep your users productive without the distraction of IT problems. In order to do that efficiently, your Managed Service Provider (MSP) must keep all the pertinent data about your system well documented and available to all technical employees who may have occasion to assist in supporting your network. It’s OK to ask your current or prospective MSP, “what tools does your firm use to document our systems and what strategies do you employ to keep that information secure?” In fact, I’d highly recommend it.
At NetCenergy, we utilize a highly effective documentation tool, and our employees are disciplined to ensure that any changes made to a client’s network are fully and accurately documented in a timely manner. This tool and the data about the client’s network can only be accessed by a very limited number of our team and requires dual-factor authentication for access.
When you call or send an email to your MSP requesting service, the assigned support resource needs to know all about the system, including any changes that may have been made as recently as the past hour. Armed with this information, the technical resource can accurately and efficiently resolve the user’s issues and get them back to business.
Death and taxes are a certainty. What’s also certain? Attempting to support an IT system without the proper documentation will cause resolution delays and can put your critical data in jeopardy.
For more information on how to select a quality service provider, check out our previous blogs or give us a call.
Authored by Donald Nokes