A co-managed partnership should make your IT operation measurably better. But "better" is easy to say and hard to prove without agreed measures. The good news is that a small, well-chosen set of metrics tells you most of what you need to know.
Here is how to measure a co-managed partnership in a way that is fair to both sides and useful to leadership.
The service level agreement, or SLA, sets expectations in writing. For co-managed IT, a useful SLA usually covers:
Response time: how quickly a ticket is acknowledged by a person, by priority.
Resolution or update targets: how quickly issues are fixed, or at least how often the requester hears back.
Coverage hours: which hours and days the partner is responsible for.
Escalation: how and when issues are passed to your internal team or senior engineers.
Security response: how quickly confirmed threats are contained and reported.
Define priority levels clearly. A building-wide outage is not the same as a single slow printer. Most organizations use three or four priorities with examples for each.
Reports can include dozens of numbers. Focus on the handful that answer real questions.
First response time. How long until a person acknowledges a ticket? This is what users notice most.
Time to resolution by priority. Are urgent issues getting fixed quickly? Track by priority so a pile of low-priority requests does not hide a slow response to critical ones.
Ticket volume and trends. How many tickets came in, from where and about what? Rising volume in one area often points to a problem worth fixing at the root.
Partner resolution rate. What share of tickets did the partner resolve without needing your internal team? This shows how much load is actually being lifted.
Reopened tickets. Tickets that come back often mean the first fix did not stick.
After-hours activity. How many alerts and requests came in outside business hours, and how were they handled?
Patch and security compliance. What share of devices are fully patched and protected by endpoint security?
Project milestones. Are agreed projects on schedule?
Numbers do not tell the whole story. Two simple additions help:
User satisfaction: a one-question survey after ticket closure. Watch for trends, not individual scores.
Internal team feedback: ask your IT staff each quarter whether the partnership is saving them time and whether anything is frustrating.
The second one matters a lot. If your internal team feels the partner creates more work than it removes, that is important no matter what the dashboards say.
A rhythm that works for many organizations:
Monthly: a short written report with the core metrics and a few notes on trends. Your IT manager reviews it and flags anything to discuss.
Quarterly: a meeting between your IT lead, the partner and possibly an executive sponsor. Review trends, revisit the RACI, adjust scope and plan the next quarter's projects.
Keep the quarterly meeting focused on decisions, not just reading numbers aloud.
Metrics are most useful when both teams use them to find problems and fix them. If response times slip, ask why. Perhaps routing rules send tickets to the wrong queue. Perhaps a new system is generating noise. A good partner will bring these findings to you before you ask.
A few traps to avoid:
Closing tickets too fast. Fast closure looks good until the same issue keeps coming back. Watch reopened tickets.
Averages that hide outliers. One critical issue that took two days can disappear in an average. Look at the slowest tickets too.
Counting activity instead of outcomes. Hundreds of alerts handled sounds impressive, but fewer, better-tuned alerts may be the real goal.
Executives do not need every metric. Give them a short summary: what the partnership delivered this quarter, any issues and what is planned next. Tie it back to the goals you used to justify the partnership in the first place.
A few clear measures, reviewed on a steady rhythm, keep a co-managed partnership honest and focused. They also give your IT manager solid evidence to share with leadership.
Sidecar IT reports on agreed metrics every month and meets with each client's IT lead quarterly. Call or text 512-631-0480 if you want to see a sample of what that reporting looks like.
Roadmaps, budgets and leadership reporting built with your IT lead.
Call or text: 512-631-0480
New customers: [email protected]
Existing partners: [email protected]
Service area: based in Austin, Texas, with technicians across the South and Midwest
Hours: Mon–Fri 8 AM–5 PM CT; after-hours coverage for partners