A poorly defined IT outsourcing contract leads to unexpected costs, slow support and security gaps you don't find out about until something goes wrong. These are the questions worth asking before you sign.
What exactly is covered
Get the provider to list, in writing:
- Which devices are covered: laptops, tablets, phones.
- Which systems are included: email, cloud storage, internal databases.
- Which locations are supported.
- What's explicitly excluded, such as third-party software licences or specialist hardware repairs.
Without this, you find out what's "out of scope" the first time you're billed for it.
Response times, in writing
Ask for a Service Level Agreement (SLA): the document that sets out how fast they respond and fix things.
- How is a critical issue told apart from a routine one?
- How fast will someone acknowledge each priority level?
- How long should a fix actually take?
- What happens if they miss those times?
Support hours
- What are the standard hours?
- Are evenings, weekends and holidays covered, and at what cost?
- How is an emergency defined, and how do you reach someone outside normal hours?
Who can access your systems
- Who has admin access, and how is that logged?
- What's the process if there's a breach or an unauthorised access attempt?
- Who owns the passwords and admin credentials? (It should be you, not them.)
How you leave
The relationship ending shouldn't mean losing access to your own systems.
- Documentation, network maps and inventory lists belong to you, not the provider.
- Your data is explicitly yours in the contract.
- How much notice is needed to end the contract, and is there a handover period?
- Are there early-termination fees?
Before you sign
If something matters to you, it needs to be in the contract, not something the provider told you verbally.
