IT Support is that generic term in which a business will purchase support services from another business who posses the technical skills to aid in the management and maintenance of their technology. IT Support comes in many guises, but once a decision has been taken to allow a 3rd party access to your corporate network you are essentially allowing them full access to all your corporate information. This relationship requires a great deal of work from both parties; one to ensure they fully understand the technical set up and the other to ensure any issues are being fixed efficiently as possible.
When the relationship breaks down, or as is more often the case, the company has outgrwon the supplier, there can sometimes be a reluctance by management to change the support partner based around fear of downtime. As with running a good IT department, one of the best ways to ensure a smooth transition is to ensure that your technology set up is well documented. You can achieve this in a number of different ways and this will depend on your own circumstances and set up.
We have worked with a number of clients to migrate to another supplier and we achieved it in a stress and risk free environment. We ensured that the clients' systems were fully documented, and that the client and IT support company to used the same documentation. Any changes that needed to be made went through a change request system and then documents held at the client site were updated and then forwarded to the IT Support partner. This way our client had a copy and always felt in control of the relationship. When they decided to change their supplier they did so feeling confident any change and disruption would be kept to a minimum as they held a copy of their technical bible. The new partner was able to quickly and easily understand their infrastructure which meant resolving issues was much quicker.
We have helped a number of clients migrate from one provider to another, and in all instances it has been stress and risk free for the client.