SWITCHING IT PROVIDER
Discover how we ensure a smooth transition of service when switching to Akita, and how we support your organisation’s growth and success.
Organisations can reach a point where they know their existing IT provider is no longer right for them.
Whether it’s repeated poor response times, a major project failure, high costs or an obvious skills gap, signs will be there that the relationship needs to end.
But there can still be hesitancy to make the change, fearing the stress, difficulty or time pressures of doing so.
With the right partner, none of these things need to be a concern.
As a leading IT support and managed service provider, we regularly speak to organisations that share these same concerns.
We, therefore, aim to make the transition of service process of switching IT provider to Akita as simple and stress-free as possible. We take on all the responsibilities of accessing and learning your systems, transferring licences and checking network performance.
And we work with organisations to help them develop an ongoing IT roadmap, establishing short and long term aims that sit in line with their own business goals.
WHAT TO CONSIDER WHEN SWITCHING IT PROVIDER?
When speaking with organisations considering switching IT provider, the below are often the key motivators:
Response Time
Many IT providers claim to offer responsive IT support. But can they prove that?
Response times are built into our Service Level Agreement (SLA) contract, ensuring all issues are addressed within less than two hours. In reality, it's typically much faster than this (our current average is around 35 minutes).
Plus, we also prioritise IT support issues based on their severity. So if your issue is business-critical, we’ll be sure to help you first.
Proactive Approach
Responsive service is one thing. But it’s more effective if problems don’t arise in the first place.
Our proactive support approach is effective in helping organisations reduce IT-related business disruption.
From monitoring systems performance and patching software to ensuring that updates take place outside of work hours, we save our customers time and money.
Scalability
A good IT provider should have the capacity to support your success, no matter how large you grow.
Akita has a team of over 40 IT engineers and consultants, and support organisation of up to 500 people without an issue. So your organisation can do a lot of growing, safe in the knowledge we’re there to support you.
But support shouldn’t be the only way an IT provider offers scalability…
Services
A professional IT partner should have the skills and services to be able to help its customers to develop and enhance their systems and setup.
Akita offers over 40 managed services that serve organisations from start-up to enterprise in size, covering everything from basic IT requirements to unified communications, consultancy and advanced business systems.
By switching IT provider to Akita, you’ll have a partner whose services and expertise can scale with you.
Price
When it comes to IT service costs, consider value rather than price.
At Akita, we know there are cheaper providers in the market. But we also know they can't deliver to our level of service or talent. And because we hear from them, we also know they don't keep their customers happy for long!
Our service delivers value to our customers by not only fixing issues, but preventing them in the first place. And we see how our services help our customers to grow and succeed.
We see this as the value we add. And from the 200+ five star reviews we’ve received from our customers, we think they see it too.
COMMON RESERVATIONS ABOUT SWITCHING
We hear lots of reasons why organisations are afraid to switch, even after 100% price rises! Here’s a summary of the most common reasons we hear – and what we say in return:
“A new IT provider won't know our systems”
It’s true that every IT system is set up in a different way. And it’s for this reason that Akita devotes time at the start of a new relationship to learning systems, documenting admin rights, and reviewing setup in-line with organisational goals.
In doing so, we’ll often review systems that haven’t been audited in years. So, it’s fairly common to discover ways to improve organisations’ IT setups or enhance their security.
So if anything, switching IT provider to Akita should make your systems better.
“How do we know if our new IT provider has the right skill set?”
This is a legitimate concern with smaller IT support providers. And in our time, we’ve seen some terrible setups where IT partners have tried to hide their lack of skills.
Akita works with organisations of all sizes and across practically every industry, so we have experience in a vast range of systems, software and solutions. With more than 40 IT expert engineers and consultants, we carry a huge breadth of experience and skills.
But in the very rare case that we encounter something new to us, we’re humble enough to say so. So if there’s that one niche piece of software you really need help with, we’ll put our best people on the job to learn how we can help you.
“Switching IT provider is going to involve lots of effort on our part”
Your time is valuable, and you don’t have much to spare for a new IT provider. That’s why Akita’ transition of service model is designed to let us take on the hard work.
We’ll document your systems, catalogue licences and hardware, and review your setup. We’ll obtain all relevant information from your current IT provider and even inform relevant third-party service providers (phone systems, internet providers, print suppliers etc.) that we’re now managing your IT.
We will want to spend some time with you – but only to understand your organisation’s goals and how we can help you achieve them. But you can leave the IT-side of things to us.
“Our old IT provider will cause us problems”
If your current IT provider tries to make it difficult to leave, it usually confirms that you’re making the right decision.
But you don’t need to worry. As part of our transition of service process, we handle all of the technical elements of switching IT provider. This includes obtaining relevant passwords and access rights from your old provider and migrating any licences to our care. Just leave it to us to get the information we need.
And whatever your old IT provider says, remember you were only paying for their services – YOU own YOUR IT systems. No one can legally withhold your data or threaten to turn services off prematurely.
What our customers say
If you’re looking for a testimonial for our service, you can read our reviews to see what our existing customers think of us.
And in terms of our transition process, the below quote was provided by one of our recent new customers:
“I just wanted to drop a quick note to say how impressed I have been with the service provided to us from Akita in the management of our migration from our old supplier to you.
I am usually the person that hears all the issues relating to IT and so far I have only had praise from my team. Mentions like “it’s so easy now” and “The new IT company are super easy to speak to and extremely helpful”.
So if you’re ready to switch IT provider, why not get in touch? We’ll be happy to provide a comparison quote and our thoughts on how you may benefit from our services.
Moving to Akita
Having helped hundreds of organisations move over to our service, our process for bringing new customers on board with as little hassle as possible is well refined.
We’ll obtain all information about your systems from your current IT provider, and transfer any relevant licences or cloud services. We’ll even introduce ourselves to your other 3rd party suppliers (telecoms, internet etc.) so we can help you manage these services too.
One of our consultants will then spend time learning your internal processes, ensuring we know how you work so we can support that.
And we’ll also draw up a roadmap on how systems can be improved, aligning this to your organisational goals.