The VALUE of Onboarding

The basic COMPONENTS of an onboarding project

OBJECTIVE: Establish First Call’s core people, processes, and tools necessary to activate the services and de-activate legacy services, while also familiarizing ourselves with the client’s personnel, operations, and technology infrastructure.

Project PLAN

What does the ONBOARDING process look like?

How long does ONBOARDING TAKE?

Onboarding project budgets vary based on the size and scope of the organization. First Call budgets a minimum of 56 hours for handoffs, project management, accounting, records, tool deployments, travel, client kick-off meetings, help desk go-live readiness, quality assurance, etc.

From Commitment to Internal Pre-Planning is typically 30 days.

From Customer Kick off to Quality Management/Closeout, typically another 60 days.

While all parties aspire to go faster the reality is there are a lot of moving parts, resources, and conditions that need to be met to successfully onboard First Call while offboarding legacy services/vendors.

Who needs to be involved in ONBOARDING

from your team?

IT serves all aspects of your organization. Think of it like you are establishing an IT Department. All the other executives and departmental Managers would need to be aware of the fundamentals:

Who works with our EXISTING IT Service Provider/Managed Service Provider (MSP) to manage their offboarding?
Is there any risk of harm?

The typical process once a commitment has been made to First Call is for the client to professionally and formally notify their existing MSP of their decision. This notification should request a client point of contact for First Call to work with in the process.

First Call will work with the legacy vendor to coordinate their offboarding process with First Call’s onboarding process to avoid gaps in services. First Call will keep the customer point of contact aware of communication and progress as it is made by cc’ing them on correspondence.

All MSPs understand that clients make decisions to best serve their organizations. The MSP has a reputation to protect and works professionally through the process keeping everyone’s best interests in mind. This is not a new process for them or First Call.

First Call cannot guarantee cooperation, but it has been our experience that if clients are paying for the services incurred and not withholding fees due to a disagreement with the vendor the process is managed well by all parties.

What are the HOURLY RATES for work not covered by the agreement?

Level 1 Support Tech 150.00 / hour

Level 2 Support Tech 160.00 / hour

Level 3 Support Tech 170.00 / hour

Level 1 Project Tech 150.00 / hour

Level 2 Project Tech 180.00 / hour

Level 3 Project Tech 210.00 / hour

Microsoft LICENSING

First Call is a Microsoft Gold Partner and will manage Microsoft licensing of Office, Windows, Azure, and related products through the Microsoft NCE program or equivalent.

There is a fee for onboarding these licenses separate from the managed services onboarding fee.

What CONTROLS are in place from First Call to help PROTECT US from First Call? 

First Call takes security seriously and works with Banks, Credit Unions, Hospitals, Criminal Justice systems, Airports and Department of Defense manufacturing. All these organizations have a formal due diligence process First Call works through periodically.  What follows is a high-level breakdown of the controls that First Call maintains to protect ourselves, which in turn, protects our clients.  

SUMMARY

• First Call has a Security Director charged with business continuity on staff.
• There is a senior level steering group in place spanning the Security Director, CEO, CFO and Services Director.
• There is ongoing business impact analysis to identify risks, prevention controls and recovery time objectives.
• First Call maintains a record of key 3rd party vendors and their regulatory / business continuity standards alignment documentation.
• There is an incident management and recovery process in place.
• There is a formal IT disaster recovery plan in place.
• There is an ongoing program of exercising and testing.
• The strategy, solutions, and plans are regularly reviewed and updated.
• The system is in line with a nationally recognized cybersecurity framework.
• First Call’s centralized systems and data are stored at nationally recognized data centers and cloud platforms that meet regulatory requirements.
• Customer backup data is stored at nationally recognized data centners (US Based) that meet regulatory requirements. Data is encrypted in transport and at rest.
• Liability insurance is maintained, and certificates of insurance are available upon request.
• First Call has a US based 3rd party Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) / Security Operations Center (SOC) / Managed Detection and Response (MDR) vendor in place 24/7/365 for its internal systems.

Meet Your vCIOs

It’s a fancy title. We didn’t invent it. A vCIO is a smart technology professional with business experience. They create relationships with the key people in your organization to understand your business, operations, objectives, challenges, and opportunities. When they understand you, your team, and the needs they can help steer your IT over time to better serve the organization. They understand the technology and the operational challenges organizations face.

Meet Your TAMs

Think of a TAM like an IT auditor. Once a year they come onsite, doing an “Essential” review of your technology against our Essential set of IT and cybersecurity standards. Finding the gaps, improving documentation, proactively reviewing the environment to reduce issues, improve standards alignment and improve the documentation for all parties involved.

The TAM and the vCIO work closely to raise issues that need attention from the organization, so that good decisions and investments are consistently made.