How to Switch Digital Support Providers Without the Headache | Mando Group

Yes, You Can Change Support Providers. Here’s How...   

You’re stuck. Your current support partner is underperforming, but the idea of switching feels overwhelming.

"What if it disrupts the business?" 
"What if it’s more trouble than it’s worth?" 
"What if the new partner is just as bad or worse?"

These are the questions keeping IT and digital leaders awake at night. The good news? Switching providers doesn’t have to mean disruption, delay, or disaster. In fact, with the right process (and partner), it can be one of the most transformational decisions your business makes.

Here’s your step-by-step guide to switching digital support providers calmly, confidently, and without the chaos. 

Why Staying Still Is the Riskier Option  

Before we get into the how, let’s tackle the why. 

Many digital and IT teams stay with their current provider out of fear. But that fear leads to real costs:   

• Security vulnerabilities left unpatched
• Platform instability that puts revenue at risk
• Delays in feature delivery that frustrate stakeholders
• Low morale in IT and digital teams stuck in reactive mode
• Career risk for the one person championing change 

In this scenario, switching providers isn’t the risk - it’s the remedy. 

Step 1: Acknowledge the Need for Change   

Your gut already knows the truth: something isn’t working. Here’s how to validate that instinct with hard facts:

• Review recent outages, delays in new features being released, and ticket backlogs.
• Survey relevant internal stakeholders: Are they happy with support performance? Do they have concerns?
• Evaluate responsiveness against SLAs - are they being met?
• Consider business impact: Is your platform helping or hindering progress?

If the evidence points to ongoing pain, it’s time to act. 

Step 2: Understand and Overcome the False Beliefs 

These are the most common (but misguided) reasons businesses delay switching: 

"It will cause too much disruption." 
With Mando Group, switching is a structured process that ensures continuity from day one. 

"We don’t have time to vet new partners." 
We’ve designed an efficient onboarding and due diligence process so you can assess us quickly and clearly. 

"What if the new provider is worse?" 
We offer proof from real clients and a measurable onboarding process to track performance early and often. 

"We’ve invested too much in the current partner." 
Staying in a toxic relationship because of sunk costs just increases future losses.

"Our internal problems are the real issue." 
We’re used to untangling complex digital estates and restoring harmony across teams. 

Step 3: Choose a Partner That Specialises in Transitions 

Transitioning support providers requires experience, maturity, and care. Mando Group has led numerous successful handovers from outgoing suppliers across complex tech stacks, including enterprise-grade DXP estates. 

Here’s what we bring to every transition:

• A dedicated onboarding team including a Service Delivery Manager and Release Manager
• Operational BAU workshops mapping out the desk-to-desk engagement model
• Initial and ongoing knowledge transfer sessions with outgoing partners  
• Coexistence planning with outgoing partners

We do this with empathy - understanding that your team is cautious and not wanting to repeat any past mistakes. 

Step 4: A Detailed Onboarding Technical Analysis 

Before switching, map out the current state of your digital platform(s). We help clients with a comprehensive onboarding technical analysis that covers:

• General setup and structure - how this looks from a best practice and cleanliness/maintainability aspect
• Customisations to the CMS platform
• Integrations - including third party or external APIs, CRM platforms, Google Analytics, email services
• Hosting/infrastructure - This might not be applicable if your solution is hosted as a managed cloud service but our assessment will verify if there's a custom hosting element
• Development - local environment setup, known issues, ongoing work and backlog status
• Build/deployment pipelines - tooling, processes, deployment topology for building and shipping changes to the application
• Solution support - any key areas of complexity in the solution, any authenticated areas, known issues/problem areas, any pain points, risks
• Static code analysis - check the overall code health of the solution including security vulnerabilities, bugs and general code quality
• Solution documentation

This approach helps us, and incoming clients, understand what needs attention immediately, what can wait, and what opportunities lie ahead. 

Step 5: Set Realistic Expectations (and Get Reassurance) 

Here’s the truth: no provider can solve everything overnight. But, what you should expect from day one is:

• Clear lines of communication
• Fast time to assurance: That early moment when you know it’s better already
• Visible progress against key issues 

We’ll give you regular reports and honest assessments because long-term trust is built on transparency. 

Step 6: Prioritise Stability, Then Growth  

Our transition model focuses on three clear phases:

1. Support 
We provide responsive 24/7/365 technical support to keep your platforms running smoothly. Our support services are tailored to enterprise requirements with clear SLAs, dedicated teams, and the confidence of specialist DXP knowledge.​

2. Maintain 
We take care of the essentials that keep your digital platform healthy and secure from updates and patching to performance checks and infrastructure alignment.

3. Optimise 
We help you unlock more from your platform, your people, and your processes. Through performance optimisation and practical consulting, we drive measurable improvements across the digital experience. 

Many clients use the above phase(s) to prepare for replatforming, relaunches, or broader transformation programmes once stability is proven.