After making the decision to hire a managed service provider, there’s a feeling of blissful peace. You and your team no longer have to stress over all the IT. You now have a whole dedicated team that has your back. The only concern? Transitioning responsibilities and onboarding with an outside team.
It’s understandable. Making the investment into a managed service provider is a substantial business decision and it’s important to get off on the right foot. And even more important without disrupting business operations. We first introduced our managed service offering, BriteStar, over a decade ago and have since worked on streamlining and making the onboarding process as efficient and stress-free as possible.
In the past we’ve covered what BriteStar offers and so today we’re giving you a BTS look at what BriteStar’s managed service onboarding process entails.
The team
First, let’s do a quick overview of who you’ll be working with. Since signing with BriteStar ensures that the day-to-day tactical IT tasks will be outsourced to our dedicated NOC team, it’s important to know who you’ll be working with. With three tiers of specialists, you can be confident any problem will be escalated to the proper resource.
- Tier 1 specialists handle the front-line, solving problems on the spot.
- Tier 2 specialists tackle those IT challenges that are a little more complex or require a longer deep dive into the issue.
- Tier 3 specialists focus on the network administration and proactive care of environments to reduce future downtime, while also improving security.
On top of the NOC team, each client is assigned a strategical consultant. Our consultants focus on evaluating and optimizing environments to ensure each is as efficient and secure as possible. The last Brite member of the team is our vice president of MSP, the visionary of BriteStar. His role focuses on exploring and evaluating the latest technology to improve the BriteStar service.
Let us not forget the most critical part of the team – the client. We prioritize the relationship and communication with our clients to ensure that all needs are being met and that there’s no confusion at any step of both the on-boarding process or throughout the partnership. The client’s active participation in the process makes a huge difference.
The onboarding process
The process involves a combination of all players mentioned above. Each step of the 6-phase process is assigned to either the Brite NOC team, Brite’s Strategic Consultant or the client team. The objective of the onboarding is to have all documentation in place, a complete understanding of the infrastructure and network and implementing BriteStar’s toolset.
To get a better idea of the process, we outlined the phases and included highlights of each below:
Phase 1: Onboarding Prep
Finalize agreement and documentation, order necessary hardware, begin importing users into ticketing system
Phase 2: Installation and Discovery Phase
Begin diving into the network to gain a better understanding of the current setup, install on-site manager for network discovery.
Phase 3: Validation and Documentation
Complete all onboarding documentation including procedures, support agreements. At the end of this phase there is a Welcome User Guide outlining all key information.
Phase 4: Backup/BDR Configuration and Install
Backups are critical in disaster recovery situations, this phase installs BriteVault and establishes backup schedules.
Phases 1-4 happen over a span of 30 days.
Phase 5: BriteStar Goes Live!
Support is redirected to the Brite NOC, the NOC reviews existing tickets and the first quarterly business review is scheduled.
Phase 6: Migration and Final Setup (day 31-90)
Based on network assessment and usage policy, implement group policies. Finalizing with Microsoft 365 migration, email protection configuration, VPN set-up, firewall installation.
Our goal throughout the entire comprehensive onboarding is to transition seamlessly and completely within the time frame. There are a lot of pieces moving simultaneously, but with each step outlined and open communication, we’re confident that our process takes the pressure off!
We just want you to remember that BriteStar is an extension of your team, and is always here to help offload the tactical, day-to-day tasks. And whenever you’re ready, our managed service onboarding process is here for the easy transition.