How to Choose an IT Support Company in Glasgow

Ask around Glasgow and you will find no shortage of IT companies willing to take your money. The hard part is working out which ones will actually make your week quieter.

Here is what we would look at if we were the ones buying.

Are they proactive or reactive?

This is the single biggest difference between a good provider and an expensive one. A reactive provider waits for you to phone in a problem, then bills you for solving it. Their income goes up when your systems go down, which is an uncomfortable incentive to build a business on.

A proactive provider monitors your servers, laptops and backups around the clock, patches them on a schedule, and fixes small problems before they become your problem.

What to ask: "How many tickets did your average client raise last month, and is that number going up or down?" A proactive provider will know, and the number will be falling.

Can they quote a price you can actually plan around?

Hourly billing punishes you for asking questions. You end up sitting on a niggling issue for three weeks because nobody wants to start the meter.

Flat-rate per user per month removes that. You know the number, it appears on the same date every month, and your team is free to ask for help the moment something is wrong.

What to ask: "What would push my bill above the quoted figure?" If the answer takes more than a sentence, be careful.

Do they turn up?

Remote support handles the vast majority of issues, and it should. But there is always the failed switch, the server that will not boot, or the new starter who needs a machine built. Somebody has to be in the room.

What to ask: "Are on-site visits included, and what is the travel policy?" Glasgow and the wider west of Scotland should be covered without mileage charges bolted on afterwards.

How seriously do they take security?

Cyber insurance renewals and client due diligence questionnaires are getting harder every year. Your IT provider should already be running you to a recognised standard rather than scrambling when a form lands.

What to ask: "Are you Cyber Essentials certified yourselves, and will you get us certified?" A provider who has not bothered for their own business is a poor bet for yours.

Will they work alongside your own people?

Plenty of Glasgow firms in the 30 to 100 user range already have an internal IT person. They do not need replacing. They need the monitoring, patching, backups and out-of-hours load taken off them so they can work on projects instead of firefighting.

What to ask: "Do you offer co-managed IT, and how do you split responsibilities?"

What happens if it does not work out?

Read the exit clause before you read the sales deck. Long lock-ins with painful notice periods usually mean the provider expects clients to want out.

What to ask: "What is your notice period, and who owns our documentation and licences if we leave?" The honest answer is that you own them, and any provider who hesitates has told you something important.

The Orange Penguin take

We have been doing this from Dundee since 2007, and we now cover Glasgow and the west on exactly the same terms as our home patch: named engineers, flat monthly pricing, on-site cover included, and no long lock-in.

We also offer a 30 Day Switch With Confidence Promise. If we are not the right fit in the first month, you walk away. That is a fairly strong signal about how the previous six questions get answered.

If you want an honest read on your current setup, our free IT health check takes about an hour and you get the findings whether or not you ever work with us. You can also see what we cover on our IT support Glasgow page.