Master the MSA for Your Managed Services Providers
Perfect your MSAs by avoiding disputes, clarifying obligations, and customizing your agreements.
- Master Services Agreements and Service Level Agreements are tedious, and reviewers may lack the skills and experience to effectively complete the process.
- Managed services providers have a repository of contract terms and conditions that are road-tested and prepackaged, and which are often biased in their favor.
- With many different pricing options, it is difficult to choose the services you need.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Manage your managed services providers. Added value is realized when managed service providers are in tune with your IT strategies, goals, and mission.
- Negotiate an agreement that is beneficial to both parties. The most successful partnerships are a win-win agreement.
- Lawyers can’t ensure you get the best business deal. They tend to look at general terms and conditions and may overlook IT-specific components.
Impact and Result
- Understanding managed services providers, including their roles and pricing models, will give you valuable insight into negotiating the best deal for your organization.
- Info-Tech’s contract review methodology will help you navigate the complex process of managed services provider contract evaluation and review all the key details to maximize the benefits to your organization.
- This blueprint provides guidance on catching vendor-biased terms and conditions, and suggests tips for getting managed services providers to take on their fair share of responsibilities.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Neurogene
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
2
Phil offered great advice. He understood what I was looking for and provided some pros and cons as well as guidance. He was available quickly for a... Read More
Peabody Investments Corp.
Guided Implementation
9/10
$12,063
5
Montgomery County Board of County Commissioners
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,776
60
Gordana is so knowledgeable when it comes to contracts. She was able to answer questions like Master Agreements as well as Master Maintenance Agree... Read More
DeVry University
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Bauer Hockey LLC
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
50
The best part of my experience is that I gained insight into an expensive contract that my organization is considering. The work we do up-front wil... Read More
Canpotex Limited
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Lamb Weston
Guided Implementation
9/10
$70,034
10
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst
Get the help you need in this 1-phase advisory process. You'll receive 2 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
- Call 1: Review an MSA contract for common pitfalls and gotchas and maximize benefit to your organization.
- Call 2: Discuss next steps for the MSA contract and any applicable negotiation required with the vendor.
Contributors
- David R. Sawh, Senior Portfolio, Program and Project Management Consultant, The Sawh Group
- Steven Jeffery, Vice-President of Strategic Sourcing, 4Degrees North
- 11 anonymous contributors
Looking at Risk in a New Light: The Six Pillars of Vendor Risk Management
Manage Exponential Value Relationships
Jump Start Your Vendor Management Initiative
Capture and Market the ROI of Your VMO
Cut Cost Through Effective IT Category Planning
Design and Build an Effective Contract Lifecycle Management Process
Maximize Value From Your Value-Added Reseller (VAR)
Drive Successful Sourcing Outcomes With a Robust RFP Process
Reduce Risk With Rock-Solid Service-Level Agreements
Slash Spending by Optimizing Your Software Maintenance and Support
Identify and Manage Financial Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Strategic Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Reputational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Security Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Evaluate Your Vendor Account Team to Optimize Vendor Relations
Elevate Your Vendor Management Initiative
Prepare for Negotiations More Effectively
Implement Your Negotiation Strategy More Effectively
Evaluate and Learn From Your Negotiation Sessions More Effectively
Proactively Identify and Mitigate Vendor Risk
Master the Public Cloud IaaS Acquisition Models
Essentials of Vendor Management for Small Business
Identify and Manage Regulatory and Compliance Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Identify and Manage Operational Risk Impacts on Your Organization
Don’t Allow Software Licensing to Derail Your M&A
Identify and Reduce Agile Contract Risk
Improve Your Statements of Work to Hold Your Vendors Accountable
Understand Common IT Contract Provisions to Negotiate More Effectively
Master Contract Review and Negotiation for Software Agreements
Master the MSA for Your Managed Services Providers
Negotiate SaaS Agreements That Are Built to Last
Establish a Vendor Management Roadmap to Succeed With Autonomous Technologies
Price Benchmarking & Negotiation
Stop Wasting Time Evaluating Commoditized Products and Services
Ensure Business Alignment in Managed Service Agreements
Comparing Software Practices in Maturing IT
Run IT By the Numbers
Transform IT, Transform Everything
The Race to Develop Talent
Building Info-Tech’s Chatbot
Assessing the AI Ecosystem
Sync or Sink: Aligning IT and HR for the Future of Work
Building the Road to Governing Digital Intelligence
Bring AI Out of the Shadows
The AI Vendor Landscape in IT
IT Spend and Staffing Benchmarking
An Operational Framework for Rolling Out AI