What to Expect with Our Pittsburgh IT Services

One of the hardest parts about business partnerships is starting one. This is because there’s usually some hesitation – what are they really like in their day-to-day life? Can they meet my IT needs, is this going to work out?

And that’s understandable, as partnering with a team that offers Pittsburgh IT services is going to be an investment. You’re going to want to get as much information as possible before beginning a long-term relationship, especially if you are transitioning to a newPittsburgh MSP.

At Ceeva, we pride ourselves on our values of honesty and transparency. That’s why we created this article – to help you get a better understanding of how we work with your team from the very start. Let’s dive in!

What’s the initial process when I sign on with Ceeva?

The very first thing is for you to meet the team you’d be working with daily. This introductory meeting would normally include our client success manager, onboarding specialist, and your primary engineer contact. Your engineer would be hand-picked to best match your IT needs, your and their IT experience, and even your general personality. 

What happens during the kick-off call?

We keep our kick-off calls as succinct as possible, as we know you have many other pressing matters to attend to. The entire call could take up to an hour or less.

In the first third of the call, our customer success manager will outline our steps to success, help you get to know the team, and set us up for long-term success – we pride ourselves on our local partnerships and professional friendships!

For the rest of the call, your engineer and project lead will start to get into the nitty-gritty of getting your services rolled out, scheduling some time to come see your space, and addressing your projects, top concerns, and IT pain points.

At this point, we would also start to build a knowledge base for your IT help desk needs. 

We conclude by documenting our shared goals and what exactly Ceeva will do to support your team. Part of this is asking about what is currently on your plate that needs to be taken care of. OurPittsburgh IT services can cover a wide range of solutions you might not have thought about before! 

How does Ceeva initially assess my unique IT needs?

After the onboarding call, your primary contact would travel to your Pittsburgh business or organization’s site to meet the rest of your team. Whether you have a group of volunteer IT managers, a singular IT director, or no IT-trained personnel, our team is ready to help.

Once we meet your team, we discuss the major things you’re concerned about. Maybe a recentcybersecurity breach occurred, and your security tools are the number one priority. Or maybe your organization’s data wants to be migrated to Microsoft 365 – whatever it is, we will rank its priority and get to work.

From here, your engineer would be your primary technical contact, acting as a tech expert and a project execution specialist. For major projects you will also be provided with a project manager to help. Our TSS (Technical Support Services) team would handle your help desk requests, and our client success manager would facilitate any administrative needs on our end.

Fun fact: At Ceeva, we use local and experienced engineers for our help desk support, not the classic ‘outsourced’ IT help team you might be familiar with.

In what ways would I be educated about our new IT setups and changes being made?

Once any software is installed, we will train you and your team on the best practices of the platform if desired. We can also create documentation as a future reference for your team.

Withmodern cloud technology changing how businesses and organizations work, it’s important for your provider to stay up to date on thelatest trends and technology. Our job is to keep our eyes to the ground on the latest technology, so that you know what your best options are.

Once the initial onboarding of tools and their documentation is added, our team calls onboarding ‘finished.” But onboarding never truly ends. As new projects get added, this process will repeat so everyone stays on the same page.

What does your initial support structure look like?

This question is hard to answer because it depends on the tools you use and what your internal team looks like. At some levels, our team comes in hard and fast because you might have a majorsecurity concern. For other clients, our work happens in the background and doesn’t affect you or your team much.

As an example, if we replaced your (remote monitoring and management) RMM system, you would only notice that only one icon on your PC would change. No matter what our engineers do, we always send our primary contact a general notice for what’s changing, possible training needed, and when the change will happen.

Then, the primary contact would send out the notice. In our years ofPittsburgh IT support, we’ve found that having the main contact send these notices out helps with your team’s adoption and security measures. 

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What’s the timeline of this whole onboarding process?

It normally takes a month or two for a new client to be fully onboarded. The first block of hours is used heavily for the onboarding process and creating accurate, complete documentation used for the ongoing support of your organization. 

We spend a week on deployment, and then another week on knowledge building depending on the size of your business and number of locations. We don’t schedule one kick-off meeting, and then not talk to you until it’s done in thirty days. We stay in almost constant contact with different touchpoints with members of the Ceeva team. This way, if you have any feedback for your main engineer contact, our team can facilitate that.

And because your success is so important to us, we make sure to include a customer satisfaction survey after each IT support ticket is closed. And it’s not just for show, we actively use this feedback to change how we do things. We will push people to use the Notes section for personal feedback, no matter what rating is given.

If there is less than a two-star rating given, we hone in on any miscommunications and resolve them. We sometimes find that people are not used to our help desk support process of staying on the phone until the issue is fixed, no matter how long it takes. And we can massage the support model to fit your needs.

Who should be your contact at my organization?

Our team doesn’t need to meet with your CEO every day, we only need someone to engage with. We find the most success with customers when there is accountability in both directions.

Think of when a breach occurs. If we can’t get a hold of the CEO who is our contact, that delays our response time. 

We need the person who knows the most about the company. They are usually the ones who have time to meet with our team and help us address things.

How do you bill me?

Instead of the traditional IT model where you pay X hours, and if you go over you get charged a higher rate, we use a ‘block of hours’ method.

This means we give your team a block of hours to use whenever they need. Think of it as a law office retainer. We give you 30 hours of Ceeva time for a certain amount of money, and these hours NEVER expire – unless the contract is nullified, of course! 

Our billing also includes charges for recurring security tools. This includes antivirus and other security tool subscriptions, Disaster Recovery services, Microsoft or other software licenses, etc. In short, we model our process to be as flexible as you need.

One thing to keep in mind: At the beginning of our partnership, we will warn you of the classic “Shark Fin” of hours usage. 

This means that during onboarding, those hours are going to go high, and then drop off to a normal level. It takes time to get tools installed and train your team, then once we go into our day-to-day (or maintenance) mode, our hours level off.

Initial “Shark Fin” Hours Visualized.

You’re Up to Speed on Our Initial Pittsburgh IT Services

Whether you need a co-managed IT engagement or a newly managed service provider, we are here to help. From a meticulous onboarding process to utilizing local, experienced engineers, our commitment to you is consistent communication and a flexible IT support structure.

Are you ready to jumpstart our partnership? Partnering with our team for Pittsburgh IT services ensures your IT needs will be met and handled with care.

Learn more about how we can help yourPittsburgh businesses thrive!