--- title: How Do You Talk to Your IT Team About Bringing In an MSP? description: Bringing in an MSP? Five Nines Technology Group explains how to talk to your IT team so it lands as added coverage, plus the questions to ask before you sign. image: https://blog.fivenines.com/hubfs/Blog%20banner%20Bringing%20In%20an%20MSP%20Without%20Losing%20Your%20IT%20Team@1x.png --- [Skip to the main content.](https://blog.fivenines.com/how-do-you-talk-to-your-it-team-about-bringing-in-an-msp#main-content) 1-855-817-5959    [help@fivenines.com](mailto:help@fivenines.com) [![FN\_Reverse\_Logo](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FN_Reverse_Logo.png?width=3022&height=849&name=FN_Reverse_Logo.png "FN_Reverse_Logo")](https://fivenines.com/) [![FiveNinesPrimaryLogo](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/FiveNinesPrimaryLogo.png?width=3022&height=849&name=FiveNinesPrimaryLogo.png "FiveNinesPrimaryLogo")](https://fivenines.com/) - [Solutions](https://fivenines.com/solutions/) - [Managed IT Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/managed-it-services/) - [Cybersecurity Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/cybersecurity/) - [Cloud & Productivity](https://fivenines.com/solutions/cloud-productivity/) - [Projects & Enhancements](https://fivenines.com/solutions/it-projects/) - [Placement Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/onsite-it/) - Industries - [Finance & Banking](https://fivenines.com/industries/banking/) - [Healthcare](https://fivenines.com/industries/healthcare/) - [Legal](https://fivenines.com/industries/legal/) - [Nonprofit](https://fivenines.com/industries/non-profit/) - [Manufacturing & Logistics](https://fivenines.com/industries/manufacturing-logistics/) - [Small & Mid-Sized Businesses](https://fivenines.com/industries/smb/) - [Insights](https://fivenines.com/resources/) - [Resource Library](https://fivenines.com/resources/) - [Blog](https://blog.fivenines.com) - [About](https://fivenines.com/about/) - [About Five Nines](https://fivenines.com/about/) - [Leadership Team](https://fivenines.com/our-team/) - [Community Impact](https://fivenines.com/community/) - [Partnerships](https://fivenines.com/partnerships/) - [Careers](https://fivenines.com/careers/) - [Company News](https://fivenines.com/news/) Let's Talk Get Support Toggle Menu Toggle Menu Let's Talk Get Support - [Solutions](https://fivenines.com/solutions/) - [Managed IT Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/managed-it-services/) - [Cybersecurity Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/cybersecurity/) - [Cloud & Productivity](https://fivenines.com/solutions/cloud-productivity/) - [Projects & Enhancements](https://fivenines.com/solutions/it-projects/) - [Placement Services](https://fivenines.com/solutions/onsite-it/) - Industries - [Finance & Banking](https://fivenines.com/industries/banking/) - [Healthcare](https://fivenines.com/industries/healthcare/) - [Legal](https://fivenines.com/industries/legal/) - [Nonprofit](https://fivenines.com/industries/non-profit/) - [Manufacturing & Logistics](https://fivenines.com/industries/manufacturing-logistics/) - [Small & Mid-Sized Businesses](https://fivenines.com/industries/smb/) - [Insights](https://fivenines.com/resources/) - [Resource Library](https://fivenines.com/resources/) - [Blog](https://blog.fivenines.com) - [About](https://fivenines.com/about/) - [About Five Nines](https://fivenines.com/about/) - [Leadership Team](https://fivenines.com/our-team/) - [Community Impact](https://fivenines.com/community/) - [Partnerships](https://fivenines.com/partnerships/) - [Careers](https://fivenines.com/careers/) - [Company News](https://fivenines.com/news/) # How Do You Talk to Your IT Team About Bringing In an MSP? [Five Nines Team](https://blog.fivenines.com/author/five-nines) : Nov 11, 2026, 6:00:00 AM 6 min read [IT Services](https://blog.fivenines.com/topic/it-services) [Healthcare](https://blog.fivenines.com/topic/healthcare) [Strategic Planning](https://blog.fivenines.com/topic/strategic-planning) ![How Do You Talk to Your IT Team About Bringing In an MSP?](https://blog.fivenines.com/hubfs/Blog%20banner%20Bringing%20In%20an%20MSP%20Without%20Losing%20Your%20IT%20Team@1x.png) *TL;DR* - **This is a coverage conversation.** Lead with the hours and skills no small team can staff, not with performance or price. - **Your IT team keeps what only they know.** Clinical workflows, vendor relationships, and the history behind every odd configuration stay internal. - **Involve them before you sign.** An IT team that helps choose the partner defends it. A team surprised by it resists it. - **Follow the sequence.** The Five Nines Coverage Conversation moves from the gap, to what stays theirs, to a written agreement. Talk to your IT team about bringing in a managed service provider (MSP) before you talk to any vendor, and open with the coverage gap instead of the cost. Five Nines Technology Group recommends naming what one or two people cannot cover, like nights, weekends, vacations, and 24/7 security monitoring, then showing your team what stays theirs and letting them help choose the partner. Picture the Monday meeting. Your IT manager walks in with a coffee and a ticket backlog. You say "managed service provider," and before you finish the sentence they are doing private math. How long until my job is gone? Who gets my admin passwords? Did I fail? ***Your IT team will hear "replacement" unless your first sentence says otherwise.*** The pressure behind the conversation is real. In the [2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study from ISC2](https://www.isc2.org/Insights/2025/12/ISC2-Publishes-2025-Cybersecurity-Workforce-Study), 88% of the more than 16,000 professionals surveyed said their organization had experienced at least one significant cybersecurity consequence because of a skills shortage. A one or two person IT team at a hospital, clinic, or community bank lives inside that statistic every day.   ## Why Does Bringing In an MSP Feel Like a Threat to Your IT Team? > **Short answer:** Because most leaders introduce it as a cost or performance decision, so internal IT staff hear a verdict on their work. In organizations with one to five IT people, the real driver is usually coverage: 24/7 monitoring, security depth, and backup for the person who never takes a real vacation. Your IT manager has probably watched a peer get "transitioned" after an outsourcing deal. That story travels. So when the topic comes up, they are not evaluating the MSP. They are evaluating their own future. There is pride in it too. The person who built your network, knows which driver update breaks the lab label printer, and answers texts at 9 p.m. has earned the right to feel protective. None of that means they will say no. It means they will hear whatever you say first through that filter. So plan the first sentence. > ### What Leadership Misses > > Your IT team has likely been asking for this help for years. They just called it "coverage," "a second set of eyes," or "one week of vacation without my laptop."   ## When Should You Tell Your IT Team You're Considering an MSP? > **Short answer:** Before you take a single vendor meeting. Five Nines recommends bringing internal IT in at the problem stage, while you are still defining what needs coverage, so your team shapes the requirements instead of reacting to a signed contract. Sequence matters more than script. If your IT manager learns about the MSP from a calendar invite titled "Vendor Demo," no wording will repair it. If they helped write the list of what the organization needs covered, the partner becomes partly their idea. In a hospital or clinic, this also means looping in whoever owns the EHR relationship and clinical informatics early. Those workflows are where an outside team can cause the most disruption by not knowing what it doesn't know. Five Nines calls the order that holds up **The Five Nines Coverage Conversation**: five moves, each one answering the question your IT team is privately asking. **The Five Nines Coverage Conversation** | Move | What you do | What your IT team hears | Skip it and you'll see | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1. Name the gap | Describe the coverage the organization lacks: nights, weekends, vacations, security monitoring | "This is about hours and skills, not about me." | Every later sentence gets read as a performance review. | | 2. Claim the keep | Say specifically what stays theirs before anything else changes | "What I know still matters here." | Quiet resume updates and slow access requests. | | 3. Inventory together | Sort last month's tickets and calendar into stays, shared, and handed off | "I get to shape this." | An MSP scope written by people who never saw the ticket queue. | | 4. Choose together | Put your IT lead in every vendor evaluation with a real vote | "This partner is partly my pick." | A partner your team tolerates instead of one it defends. | | 5. Write it down | Document ownership, escalation, and access rules before signing | "I know where my job ends and theirs begins." | Two teams each assuming the other one has it. |   ![Graphic 1 The Five Nines Coverage Conversation@1x](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Graphic%201%20The%20Five%20Nines%20Coverage%20Conversation@1x.png?width=1200&height=1414&name=Graphic%201%20The%20Five%20Nines%20Coverage%20Conversation@1x.png) Most leaders start at move four, the vendor demo. That is the one move that cannot come first.   ## What Should You Say First? > **Short answer:** Name the pressure, not the person. Open with the specific gap the organization cannot cover today, such as after-hours security monitoring or vacation coverage. Then say plainly that the goal is to add capacity around your IT team and that their role is staying. Only say that last part if it is true. If the plan is to replace internal IT, that is a different conversation, and your team deserves to hear it straight. When it is true, word choice carries most of the weight: | Instead of saying | Say | | --- | --- | | "We're looking at outsourcing IT." | "We need 24/7 coverage that two people can't provide. I want your help designing it." | | "This will save us money." | "This gets you out of the overnight alerts so you can finish the projects we keep postponing." | | "The MSP will take over the help desk." | "Let's decide together which tickets you want off your plate." | | "They'll need all the admin passwords." | "Let's agree on how access gets shared, logged, and reviewed." | | "Don't worry about it." | "What worries you about this? Let's put it on the list." |   ![Graphic 3 Say This, Not That@1x](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Graphic%203%20Say%20This%2c%20Not%20That@1x.png?width=1200&height=1378&name=Graphic%203%20Say%20This%2c%20Not%20That@1x.png) > ### Five Nines Insight > > A good MSP should make your best IT person harder to replace, not easier.   ## How Do You Decide What the MSP Takes and What Your Team Keeps? > **Short answer:** Sort the work, not the people. Walk through last month's tickets and calendar with your IT lead and place each item: what only your team knows stays internal, round-the-clock and specialized work moves to the MSP, and projects get shared with one named owner per item. This is move three of the Coverage Conversation, and it is where the emotional conversation becomes a working session. A ticket export is harder to argue with than a feeling. It also tends to make your internal team's case for them: the work that only they can do is usually obvious once it is on the table. The lanes shift by vertical. In a hospital, Keep includes EHR workflow knowledge and clinical department relationships. In a community bank, it includes core processing vendor relationships and branch operations. Hand Off looks similar everywhere: work that needs someone awake and qualified at 3 a.m. > ### The Hidden Risk > > The biggest risk is not that your IT manager pushes back. It is that they nod, say nothing, and leave six months later with the only map of your network in their head.   ## What Does Co-Managed IT Look Like Day to Day? > **Short answer:** In a co-managed model, your internal IT team and the MSP work from shared systems with clear handoffs: shared ticket visibility, shared documentation, defined escalation paths, and a standing review. Your team stays the first call for the business. The MSP covers depth, off-hours, and security operations. The friction in co-managed IT rarely comes from the technology. It comes from undefined edges. Who answers the after-hours call? Who approves a firewall change? Who tells the CFO a project slipped? Five Nines works alongside internal IT teams in co-managed engagements, adding 24/7 security operations center (SOC) monitoring, compliance management, and virtual CIO strategy that a small team cannot build alone.  Write these five answers down before go-live: 1. Who takes the after-hours call, and how does it reach your IT lead when needed? 2. Who approves changes to firewalls, servers, and core systems? 3. Where does documentation live, and who can edit it? 4. How are admin credentials shared, logged, and reviewed? 5. When do both teams meet, and who reports progress to leadership?   ## What Do We Usually See When a Co-Managed Partnership Struggles? > **Short answer:** When co-managed IT stalls, the cause is usually not the tools. Five Nines sees the same handful of human and process gaps: an IT team that was never consulted, requests that bypass the shared queue, knowledge locked in one head, and nobody owning the after-hours call. - **The silent veto.** The internal team wasn't consulted, so credentials, documentation, and access arrive slowly. Nobody refuses. Everything just takes three weeks. - **The shadow queue.** Staff keep walking requests to the internal IT person's desk. The MSP sees half the picture, and the internal team stays exactly as overloaded as before. - **The undocumented environment.** Critical knowledge lives in one person's memory. Documentation becomes the first real project, and your IT lead's expertise becomes its source. - **The after-hours blind spot.** No one defined who answers after hours, so alerts land with both teams or neither. - **The scorecard nobody agreed on.** Leadership measures the MSP on cost. IT measures it on response quality. Neither side knows the other's yardstick.   ## What Should Your IT Team Ask an MSP Before You Sign? > **Short answer:** Your IT team should ask how the MSP will work alongside them, not just what it offers. The best questions cover shared tools, named engineers, after-hours handoffs, access logging, and what happens to your documentation if the relationship ends. Hand this list to your IT lead and let them run the questions in every evaluation: 1. Will you work inside our ticketing and documentation systems, or require us to move to yours? 2. Which engineers will know our environment by name, and how long have they been with you? 3. How does an overnight issue get handed back to our team in the morning? 4. What access do you need, and how is every administrative action logged? 5. How do you resolve disagreements between your engineers and ours? 6. For healthcare: Will you sign a business associate agreement, and how do you work with our EHR vendor? For banking: How do you support GLBA requirements and examiner requests? 7. If we part ways, what happens to our documentation, credentials, and monitoring data?   ## How Much of Your IT Team's Week Should Belong to Someone Else? If your IT lead is the only person who knows the network and the only person who answers at night, this conversation is already overdue. A Five Nines Co-Managed IT Planning Session identifies:  - Which work stays internal, which is shared, and which moves to Five Nines - Coverage gaps across nights, weekends, and vacations - Security monitoring and incident response gaps - Single-person knowledge risks and missing documentation - Compliance responsibilities (HIPAA, GLBA, CMMC) and who owns each one You leave with a written coverage plan your IT team helped build. The goal was never to replace the person who knows your systems. *It was to stop making them the only one.* ![Graphic 2 Seven Questions Your IT Team Should Ask@1x](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Graphic%202%20Seven%20Questions%20Your%20IT%20Team%20Should%20Ask@1x.png?width=1200&height=1354&name=Graphic%202%20Seven%20Questions%20Your%20IT%20Team%20Should%20Ask@1x.png)   ## Frequently Asked Questions Will an MSP replace my internal IT staff? Not in a co-managed model. A co-managed MSP adds coverage, security operations, and specialized skills around your existing team, while your staff keep the business knowledge and user relationships. Some organizations do use an MSP to replace internal IT, which is a separate decision your team deserves to hear about directly. What is co-managed IT? Co-managed IT is a model where an internal IT team and a managed service provider share responsibility for an organization's technology. Five Nines typically covers 24/7 monitoring, security operations, and strategic planning, while internal IT stays the first point of contact for the business. How do I keep my IT manager from quitting when we bring in an MSP? Involve them before any vendor meeting, give them a real vote in the selection, and put in writing what stays theirs. Most IT professionals respond well when the MSP takes the after-hours alerts and routine patching, freeing them for projects that build their career. Who should own admin passwords when an MSP is involved? Your organization should own every credential. Both teams can hold administrative access, but that access should be individually assigned, logged, and reviewed on a schedule, and it should be revocable the day a relationship ends. ## Related Blog Posts ## Let's get in touch   [**(402) 817-2630**](tel:402-817-2630) [help@fivenines.com](mailto:help@fivenines.com) [Lincoln, NE](https://fivenines.com/contact/lincoln) [Omaha, NE](https://fivenines.com/contact/omaha) [Kearney, NE](https://fivenines.com/contact/kearney) [Central City, NE](https://fivenines.com/contact/central-city) [St. Louis, MO](https://fivenines.com/st-louis) ![cyberverify-1](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/cyberverify-1.png?width=110&height=110&name=cyberverify-1.png)![aicpa](https://blog.fivenines.com/hs-fs/hubfs/aicpa.png?width=110&height=110&name=aicpa.png) ### Are we a good fit? 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