Most managed services problems trace back to the agreement, not the technician.
We define the scope, run the comparison, and stay through the handoff.
How it works
Almost nobody shops for a managed services provider on a schedule. The trigger is an auto renewal notice with a price increase, a resignation that takes the only working knowledge of the environment out the door, or an outage that exposed how thin the coverage actually was. By that point the incumbent holds the documentation, the admin credentials, and the vendor relationships. The decision then gets made in three weeks with no baseline to compare against.
We work the selection and the contract, not the daily support. That means writing down what the agreement has to cover, designing the split between internal staff and outside help, running a structured comparison of qualified providers, and reading the final agreement before it is signed. We stay through onboarding until documentation, credentials, and escalation paths are in your hands and verified.
There is no product to sell. Compensation comes from the vendors through the TSD model, so the engagement carries no cost to you and the recommendation follows the requirements rather than a quota.
Start where it applies
Nobody can state what the contract covers without reading it
Internal IT is stretched and hiring is not the answer
Your provider is responsive on tickets and absent on planning
A provider was chosen and nobody oversaw the handoff
Scope Definition
A managed services agreement is a list of what someone else is responsible for. If nobody in the building can state that list, the list is not doing its job. Scope gets written before any provider gets contacted.
Draw the coverage line
- Per-user versus per-device pricing, and which one your headcount favors
- Ticket versus project boundary, written with examples both sides accept
- After-hours and weekend coverage: response time versus resolution time
- Which systems are managed, which are monitored, which are neither
Second year disputes are almost never about quality, they are about whether the work was in scope. The cheapest hour you will ever spend is the one that turns a vague support line into a named list of systems, hours, and exclusions.
Co-Managed Model Design
Co-managed is not a smaller version of fully outsourced. It is a division of labor that has to be written down function by function. Left casual, both sides assume the other one has it.
Split the work by function
- Who owns patching, who owns backups, who owns identity
- Escalation tiers named, with the internal handoff point at each
- Shared ticket queue or separate queues, and who triages first
- Tool ownership: whose RMM, whose documentation platform, whose licenses
The failure mode is not overlap, it is the quiet gap where each side believed the other had it covered. Ask your staff and the provider to walk through the same Tuesday morning outage separately, and the gaps surface in about ten minutes.
Provider Comparison
Ticket response is the easiest thing for a provider to do well. Planning, budgeting, and lifecycle work are where providers actually differ. Compare on the second set, because the first set is table stakes.
Test finalists against one scope
- Named account lead or vCIO, with a stated meeting cadence
- Reference calls with clients your size and in your industry
- Sample quarterly business review from a real account, redacted
- Technician-to-client ratio and who actually answers at 6pm Friday
Providers rarely lose accounts over response time, they lose them in the third year of no roadmap. Ask each finalist what they would tell you to spend money on next year, and the ones who cannot answer are selling break-fix on a monthly invoice.
Contract Review and Activation
Signature is the middle of the process, not the end. The first sixty days set what the relationship looks like for the whole term. Someone has to verify that onboarding actually happened.
Hold the handoff to the terms
- Admin credentials created in your tenant, owned by your company
- Onboarding milestones with dates, and who signs off on completion
- Documentation handover format, plus what happens if it arrives thin
- Offboarding terms: notice period, data export, auto renewal language
Onboarding is the only time a provider will inventory your environment without calling it a project, so require the output in writing. If it has not landed by day ninety, you will be quoted for it in year two.
How the engagement runs
Understand your environment
Current inventory, contract dates, sites, and what the business actually needs the technology to do.
Define where you want to go
Target state, growth requirements, and success criteria, all agreed before a single vendor is contacted.
Evaluate solutions
The requirement goes to every provider that can meet it, and the responses come back on terms that can be read side by side.
Define a solution and negotiate terms
Pricing, term length, service levels, and exit language are settled before signature rather than discovered on the first invoice.
Oversee activation
We stay in the project through installation, porting, and acceptance, and we escalate on the client's behalf when dates slip.
What you walk away with
A written scope of services document you can hand to any provider
A side by side finalist comparison matrix scored against that scope
A contract review memo flagging renewal, termination, and credential terms
A 90 day onboarding checklist with owner names and due dates
Questions we get
- We already have a provider and will probably stay. Is this still worth running?
- Yes, and staying is often the right answer. A structured comparison gives you a documented baseline of what the market offers at your size, which is the only real position of strength you have in a renewal conversation. It also surfaces gaps in your current agreement that can be closed by amendment instead of by switching.
- How long does a provider transition actually take?
- Plan on 30 to 60 days from signature to steady state under 200 users, longer if you run line of business applications with vendor-specific support arrangements. The technical cutover is usually the fast part. What takes time is documentation transfer, credential reissuance, and getting your staff used to a new intake process. Confirm your outgoing provider's notice period before you sign anything new.
- Can we keep our internal IT person if we bring in a provider?
- Usually that is the better outcome. Co-managed works when your internal person moves toward the work that requires institutional knowledge, vendor relationships, application ownership, and projects, while the provider absorbs the after-hours load and the tier one queue. What does not work is leaving the split undefined and hoping it settles itself. Write the division of duties into the agreement, not into a kickoff email.
- How are you paid if the engagement costs us nothing?
- Compensation comes from the provider through the TSD model, which stands for technology services distributor. When a contract is signed, the provider pays a distribution fee that would otherwise go to its own direct sales team. Your pricing comes off the same rate card either way.
- What if the right answer is staying where we are?
- That gets recommended when it is correct. A renegotiated contract with the incumbent, or leaving a working system alone, counts as a finished engagement and gets the same work as a migration.
- When should we start relative to our contract end date?
- Roughly six months out. Auto-renewal notice windows commonly close 60 to 90 days before term end, and starting inside that window removes most of the leverage. Check your specific renewal clause, since the window is the constraint rather than the end date.
The market we compare for you.
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
Bring your current managed services agreement, three months of ticket volume by category, and a current user and device count. That is enough to say whether there is anything worth pursuing.
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
We ask what you have, what is expiring, and what is not working, then tell you whether there is work here worth doing. If Elk Run is not the right fit for the decision in front of you, we will say so.