Get three quotes
Three proposals arrive in three formats, each strongest where it was written to look strongest. The decision comes down to price and rapport, and eighteen months later the same conversation happens with a different logo on it.
Your MSP contract is up. The notice period is the real deadline.
You suspect you are overpaying. Proving it is the hard part.
Almost every managed service agreement renews itself unless somebody writes a letter, and the window for that letter opens and closes long before the renewal date anybody has in a calendar. That is the first problem. The second is that comparing providers on price compares nothing, because no two of them scope the work the same way, and the only person who can explain what you currently receive is the incumbent.
Underneath
What is actually going on
The visible problem is rarely the one that decides how this goes. These are the parts that are true whether or not anybody has said them out loud.
The notice clause outranks the renewal date
The date in your head is the anniversary. The date that matters is the last day you can give notice, and it is in a clause nobody has read since signing.
You cannot compare what you cannot scope
One provider's all-inclusive is another's out-of-scope project work. Without a written definition of what you are buying, three quotes are three different products at three prices.
The documentation is theirs
Passwords, network diagrams, licence ownership, tenant admin. Whoever holds these holds the switching cost, and it is rarely written down whose they are.
Nobody internally can referee it
Evaluating a technical proposal objectively is a full-time skill, and the person doing it here has another job and a relationship with the incumbent.
The fork
Two ways this usually goes
Write the scope before you go to market
Define what good service means for your business — response, coverage, ownership, reporting — and make every provider quote against your document. Now the quotes are comparable and the incumbent has to answer the same questions as everybody else.
The order
What to do, in sequence
The order matters more than the individual steps. Most of the cost in these situations comes from doing the right things in the wrong sequence.
- First
Find the notice date
Read the agreement, establish the last date you can act, and work everything backwards from it. This is a one-hour job that changes every other option.
- Next
Establish what is actually delivered
Ticket data, response times, what has been billed as extra, what has improved in a year. Evidence rather than impression, from exports you already have.
- Then
Write the service definition
The scope you want, in your words. Coverage hours, escalation, patching, backup verification, reporting, who owns documentation and licences.
- Finally
Run the market and negotiate
Including the incumbent, who is often the right answer at a different price and scope once the questions are put properly.
The questions
What you will be asked
Each of these has a real answer and a plausible one. Knowing which you are giving is most of the job.
When is the last day we can give notice, and what form does it have to take?
What is in scope, and what has been billed as a project in the last year?
Who owns our documentation, licences and tenant administration?
What has measurably improved since the last renewal?
The result
What you end up with
- The real contract position, including notice dates and ownership
- An evidence-based picture of what is currently delivered
- A service definition written for your business, not the vendor's
- A negotiated outcome you can defend to a board
Also happening