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You really don’t want to be managing your own IT infrastructure. It’s a massive drain on your time. Time that’s better spent on things that interest you, on things that help your business.

But getting a company in to look after that stuff for you can be a bit nerve-wracking in itself. How can you be sure that they’re any good?

The single most important thing is “can you talk to them?” It doesn’t matter how technically proficient they are, if you don’t understand what they’re saying, you won’t get very far.

But once you’ve established basic lines of communication, what else do you need to know?

Here are a few things that you need to know the answers to; in six badly drawn sketches.

Any questions? Ask us anything (preferably about software, but we might be able to help with other stuff too)