An IT failure in a manufacturing company is not an email problem. It can stall engineering, blind the warehouse, stop production, and hold up shipping, all at once. So choosing an IT provider by price and a friendly sales call is a bet you don’t want to make. Instead, evaluate every candidate, including us, on five factors, then score them.
How fast do they actually respond?
Every MSP says “fast response.” Make them define it.
- How quickly is the phone answered by a human?
- How quickly does a technician start working, not just acknowledge the ticket?
- What changes when the problem is stopping production versus annoying one person?
- Are those commitments written into the agreement?
For calibration: Braintek’s phone is typically answered within about 60 seconds, and emailed tickets get a response in around two hours. Whatever numbers a provider gives you, get them in writing and ask how they’re measured. We break down what good looks like in what counts as acceptable IT response time.
Do they have real manufacturing experience?
A provider should not learn the basics of your environment during your first outage. Ask them to talk through environments like yours:
- Have they supported CAD users? Braintek supports AutoCAD and SOLIDWORKS workstations, which behave nothing like standard office PCs.
- Do they understand ERP uptime, where an hour of downtime ripples through purchasing, production, and shipping?
- Have they fixed warehouse Wi-Fi, with its metal racking, forklifts, and scanners that drop connections in dead zones?
- Can they keep business IT and shop floor equipment sensibly separated on the network?
Vague answers to specific questions are the tell. A provider with genuine manufacturing experience will describe problems you recognize.
Can they put a person in your building?
Remote support resolves most issues efficiently. It cannot replace a failed switch, repair damaged cabling, or remount an access point. Manufacturing infrastructure is physical, so ask the question plainly: if this can’t be fixed remotely, who drives to our facility, and how fast can they get here?
Listen for whether onsite visits are part of the service model or an expensive exception, and whether the people who show up are the provider’s own staff who know your environment. Braintek has people in both Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth and dispatches onsite when remote work isn’t enough.
How do they handle cybersecurity and business continuity?
Manufacturers are attractive targets because downtime is so expensive that attackers assume you’ll pay. Ask any candidate to walk through their standard stack:
- Multi-factor authentication and endpoint protection
- Backups, and how often restores are actually tested
- Disaster recovery: how long until you’re producing again after a server dies or ransomware hits
- Network segmentation between office systems and production equipment
- Patch management, security awareness training, and a written incident response process
- NIST or CMMC familiarity if your customers or contracts require it
The answers should be specific processes, not product names. Continuity planning matters as much as prevention, because the recovery plan is what determines whether an incident costs you an afternoon or a week.
What happens when the disaster hits them?
This is the factor almost nobody asks about. Texas weather does not distinguish between your building and your IT provider’s. When a hurricane floods Houston or an ice storm knocks out power across North Texas, an MSP whose entire team sits in one office goes dark exactly when you need help most.
Ask what happens to support coverage when their local staff can’t work. Braintek staffs Houston, DFW, and the Philippines, so when severe weather hits one region, people outside the affected area keep answering the phone and working tickets. Whoever you choose, make sure they have a real answer here, not a shrug.
How do you score the finalists?
Once you’ve asked the questions, resist the urge to decide on gut feel or price. Score each finalist out of 100:
| Factor | Points |
|---|---|
| Manufacturing experience | 25 |
| Response speed and service model | 25 |
| Cybersecurity and compliance | 20 |
| Local and onsite capability | 15 |
| Business continuity and provider resilience | 10 |
| Price | 5 |
| Total | 100 |
Weighting price at 5 points is deliberate. The gap between the cheapest and most expensive serious proposal is usually small compared to the cost of one badly handled production outage. The scorecard keeps the decision anchored to what actually protects the plant.
Which service model should you ask about?
The right structure depends on what you already have in-house. If you have no internal IT staff, which is typical around 10 to 50 employees, fully managed IT gives you the whole stack, help desk through cybersecurity, under one provider. If you’re a larger manufacturer with an internal IT person or team, co-managed IT fills the gaps, after-hours coverage, escalation, security tooling, and specialty systems, without duplicating what your team already does well. Be wary of any provider that pushes the bigger contract before understanding your setup.
Put us on the scorecard
Braintek has supported businesses in the Houston area since 2002, with staff in Houston, DFW, and the Philippines, and hands-on experience with the systems manufacturers actually run: AutoCAD, SOLIDWORKS, ERP platforms, and warehouse wireless. Ask us the same questions you ask everyone else. We’ll give you specific numbers and specific processes, in writing, and let the scorecard do the deciding.