Changing MSPs: A Client’s View of the Transition

Lipman Burgon & Partners

Moving your IT support to a new provider can be challenging for both parties. So we asked one of our most recent clients to share their expectations, experience and advice to help make the transition easier for others.

Lipman Burgon & Partners is a successful financial advisory firm who manage over $1 billion in assets on behalf of their clients. They pride themselves on providing high quality service and therefore expect no less of their service providers.

They had lost confidence in their previous MSP to adequately support them with the changing compliance requirements in the financial industry, and to protect their client data from increasing security risks.

Alyssa Doherty, Practice Manager at Lipman Burgon & Partners discusses the considerations leading up to their decision to change IT providers.

“Delivering on expectations is critical for every business and their clients. Timing and trust are everything. So when you are reassessing business relationships, you think very carefully before you pull up stumps and shift out. You look at the impact, the cost, the scale of change and the timeframes with a need to offset the costs and the benefits. As Gwyneth Paltrow once said, you make a “conscious uncoupling”, said Alyssa.

Smoothest IT change ever!

Lipman Burgon & Partners were the first customer to participate in an upgraded transition process developed by First Focus. So we were very keen to see if the enhancements had improved the client experience. Alyssa confirmed the extra investment had made a difference.

‘Despite the nervousness around the change for our business, we had team members stating openly ‘Wow – that was the smoothest IT change we’ve ever experienced’.’

“In terms of the establishment of that relationship I found it to be professional, organised, staged and thorough. It reinforced that we had made the right choice with our new MSP.

“Overall the change process was very well managed and we would not hesitate to recommend First Focus based on this experience” said Alyssa.

Communication and structure are critical when changing provider

Alyssa explains some of the key factors that influenced the success of their transition project.

“A big change like this can be quite daunting, however First Focus’ structured process and experience really proved valuable and helped a less current MSP to keep up with the relationship handover. I think that made a real difference.

“It was the communication. It was the visibility. It was the frequency. First Focus were active with their information sharing from the start which came from their broad experience and insights. It was a blessing not to have to think of all the questions you may not know to ask.

“There was advanced warning, there was confirmations after, there was visibility of the timeline – the stages that were involved. This is going to happen, this is going to happen next. Who is doing what. This is what to expect. Who to talk to if you have questions or concerns.

“It was also great to have a split of skills on the transition team, with specialist technical, project and relationship roles. Because there are all of those different aspects when it comes to establishing a business relationship”, said Alyssa

Advice for others

Asked what she would tell others to help them ease their move between support providers, Alyssa shared the following insights.

“How you prepare for and engage with the change process will determine how smooth or painful it is. If you’ve asked a whole lot of questions when you are identifying the new MSP, then you will have a degree of trust in the process and the relationship that you’ve agreed to.

‘Ideally, the new MSP will be able to show a transition schedule, a timeline, a staged organised process, have the necessary number of resources available and assigned to that transition project.’

“Understand that you are both learning about how each other’s environments work, how your processes fit together, how your communication styles operate. It is unreasonable to expect everything to be perfect right from the beginning and it’s essential to work together”, suggested Alyssa.