Master the MSA for Your Managed Services Providers
Perfect your MSAs by avoiding disputes, clarifying obligations, and customizing your agreements.
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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
- 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.
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should master the MSA for your MSPs, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Review terms and conditions for your MSP contract
Use Info-Tech’s MSA Contract Review Tool to locate and track improvement areas in your MSAs.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is a two call advisory process.
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.
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
Peabody Investments Corp.
Guided Implementation
9/10
$12,742
5
Montgomery County Board of County Commissioners
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,776
60
DeVry University
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
Bauer Hockey LLC
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
50
Canpotex Limited
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Lamb Weston
Guided Implementation
9/10
$70,034
10
Celero Solutions
Guided Implementation
10/10
$10,000
18
The Royal Automobile Association of South Australia
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
10
Ara Institute of Canterbury
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
N/A
