What You Need to Know Before Your MITS Network Assessment

In this video, we’ll take about what a network assessment entails, why it’s important, what you can expect to see during an assessment, and finally, how you can prepare for an assessment and what information your managed IT provider needs from you to make the process go smoothly. 

WHAT IS AN ASSESSMENT?

Our highly skilled engineers will come onsite to your office to get an in-depth look at what the tech landscape looks like within your organization. The assessment process helps us identify vulnerabilities and security concerns within your organization. It’s also a great opportunity to dig deep into your current processes and discover how to increase efficiency and reduce costs in your current IT environment. 

After the assessment, our engineers will parse through the results and make recommendations to address risk and cost concerns. Similar to how a doctor does an evaluation prior to starting a diagnosis, a good MITS partner will require an assessment before delivering a proposal. Undergoing the assessment allows us to better prepare and provide a plan for the accountability, predictability, and reliability you deserve. It’s also worth mentioning that we have a non-disclosure agreement just in case you’re concerned about us accessing your network before having a contract in place. 

WE TAKE A TWO-PRONGED APPROACH TO OUR NETWORK ASSESSMENTS

First, we’ll sit down with a wide array of key users in your organization to get an idea of what their day-to-day experience is like with the technology in your environment. We’re going to ask a lot of questions, including asking users what their roles are, and what your current support looks like - if you have an issue, what do you do? Do you email someone? How effective is this method, and how long does it typically take to reach a resolution? This discussion will give us an idea about growth and productivity within your organization, downtime, data integrity and data loss, and other issues that may be impacting your employees' performance. 

While these interviews are happening, our senior technician will be onsite handling the technical assessment. This technician will go through your organization and get a lay of the land. They’ll do things like look in the network closet, check out wireless access points, and run scans on your servers to gather specific information about your servers, connectivity, and general IT infrastructure. Also, just so you know, the scan software that we use will not be installed on your network - we’re not going to modify it, we’re just going to analyze it. If you have multiple locations then we’re also most likely going to need to go visit those sites to better understand what kind of internet they have and how they’re connecting back to the main office.

THERE ARE FIVE KEY THINGS WE NEED FROM YOU BEFORE WE CAN BEGIN OUR ASSESSMENT

1. 1. 1. First, please compile and submit a list of key people you think we should meet during the discussion segment of the network assessment. Our goal is to get a comprehensive view of your organization, so we’re going to ask a lot of questions. Some of the questions we ask will be geared to the specific person we’re talking to and will be relevant to the way they relate to your organization and IT infrastructure, for example, we’re going to have financial questions for the CFO and security questions for your internal IT person. 
      2. We will need your server administrator username and password. This information is crucial to the technical aspect of the assessment - without it, we will not be able to get into your servers to run scans. Not having this information on hand. Not having these credentials on the day of the assessment can cause major delays.
      3. We’re also going to request a copy of your internet bill. Sharing this information with us will help us understand what kind of internet connection you’re working with - whether its fiber, FiOS, MPLS, or cable. We’ll also be able to see what speed you’re paying and then be able to gauge what speeds you’re actually getting. 
      4. We’re going to need a copy of all the addresses and site contact information of all the locations that are to be assessed. This may not apply to organizations with a single location.
      5. We’re going to ask you to send out a notification to all employees and branches alerting them to our upcoming visit - this will help ensure that the people we will need to speak with will be available.

If you have any questions about network assessments, or any other step in the managed IT service provider decision-making process, please