by Scott Jack
Content Contributor, E-N Computers
More than a decade of experience in technical support including end user support, mobile device management, application deployment, and documentation.
Offboarding is the forgotten phase of an IT partnership, but it shouldn’t be. As much as we strive to keep satisfied customers, the reality is that sometimes your business changes,or we’re no longer a good fit for each other. Whatever the case is, we want your offboarding to be a good experience.
E-N Computers has been in the IT business since 1997. Over nearly three decades, we’ve seen hundreds of clients come and go. We believe that your data and systems should belong to you. If you decide it’s time to move on, we see it as our job to hand over control as smoothly as possible.
If you’re evaluating managed IT providers right now, asking about offboarding isn’t pessimistic—it’s smart due diligence. How an MSP handles exits tells you how they’ll treat you during the relationship. A provider who makes offboarding difficult is usually difficult to work with, period.
QUICK ANSWER:
Quick answer: What is the core philosophy of E-N Computers’ offboarding process?
E-N Computers views offboarding as an essential, professional transition phase, believing that clients’ data and systems belong to them. The goal is to facilitate a clean, complete handoff—typically within a 30 to 60-day notice period—by ensuring documentation is verified, access is smoothly transferred to the new provider, and professional courtesy is maintained for the benefit of all parties involved.
Our offboarding philosophy
We believe that your offboarding experience should be as good as, if not better than, onboarding. Maintaining professionalism makes the process better for everyone.
Sometimes clients leave because their business needs have changed. Maybe they’ve been acquired by a company with an established IT provider, or they’re bringing IT in-house as they scale. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of cost or strategic direction. Whatever the reason, our approach stays the same: we’re here to facilitate a clean, complete transition, said Kevin Griffith, a technical account manager at E-N Computers. “The goal is to make departing clients happy with the transition, regardless of why they’re leaving,” Kevin says. “Even if there is bad blood, we would rather play nice.”
This benefits us as well as our departing client. For example, one former non-profit client wrote to thank our team for their “professionalism and support throughout the transition”.Their associate finance director said the process was seamless. “That’s due in large part to your team’s responsiveness and flexibility,” he said. “We truly appreciate your willingness to adapt as things evolved, and your collaboration made a significant difference in ensuring the transition ran smoothly.”
That MSP-to-MSP factor is important. When we’re the new provider coming in, it makes our job so much easier when we have the cooperation of the outgoing MSP. When we’re handing off a client, we want to extend the same kind of courtesy. We work hard to eliminate friction between providers for your benefit.
A timeline of 30 to 60 days
We know that sometimes clients are anxious to move on, and we’re not interested in artificially slowing down your exit. At the same time, a responsible transition requires coordination between three parties: your team, your new IT provider, and us. A rush job risks security gaps, missed information, and service interruption.
Our contracts usually require a 30- or 60-day notice period. This gives everyone enough time to verify documentation, coordinate schedules, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Here’s what you can expect during that time.
Documentation verification. We review and update all credentials, system documentation, and network maps to make sure they are accurate. If something’s changed since the last onsite visit but wasn’t documented, this is when we catch it.
Regular communication. We conduct weekly check-ins to coordinate with you and your new IT provider. In between meetings, we communicate via email.
Coordination with your incoming IT provider. We establish a single point of contact with the new MSP or IT administrator and work with them to schedule access, answer questions, and plan the technical transition. We can grant them read-only rights to see into key systems like Microsoft 365.
Equipment and licensing review. We identify what hardware you own or lease from us, discuss options for backup systems (like whether you want to purchase the Veeam appliance), and coordinate the return of any leased equipment.
Decision on projects. If you have an ongoing project with us, we can finish the project or cancel the project and settle any open invoices.
Commencement date. This is the official switchover date, the day that your incoming provider becomes fully responsible for support. This is the day our management tools go offline,your new provider’s tools come online, and full admin access transfers to them. Everything is timed around this date.
The challenge with this timeline comes down to scheduling. Aligning the calendars of all three parties isn’t always easy. Everyone has availability constraints, and while some parts can be handled remotely, others might require onsite visits. The more flexible everyone can be, the smoother it goes.
Documentation and knowledge transfer
From the beginning of our relationship with you to the end, we take documentation seriously. “Documentation is so critical,” Kevin says. “It shows our work and protects the customer.” This information about your systems belongs to you. Your new provider also has a starting point so they know what they’re working with.
What gets transferred
We check that everything we manage for you is documented and ready to hand over. This includes information on:
- Domain registrar information and DNS records
- Admin credentials
- Licensing
- Network infrastructure (firewalls, switches, access points)
- Servers and backups
- Third-party applications
- Vendor relationships and support contacts
- Configurations and settings
We organize this information in IT Glue, which is a widely used documentation platform among MSPs.
Export formats and delivery
If your incoming MSP uses IT Glue, we can transfer ownership directly to them. If they use a different system, or you’re bringing IT in-house, we export to PDF.
We don’t favor the PDF export format—it has small fonts, displays sensitive information in plaintext, and lacks elegant presentation—but it’s comprehensive and portable. We deliver it through secure methods: encrypted email, signature-required mail, or in-person handoff to your new provider.
The documentation challengeThe completeness of documentation varies based on the history of the client relationship. Long-standing clients with regular onsite visits typically have comprehensive, up-to-date documentation. Newer relationships or environments that have undergone significant changes may require more attention during offboarding.
This is why we build documentation review into the offboarding timeline. If anything’s changed since the last comprehensive update, we catch it during this process and make sure your documentation package is complete before handoff.
Technical handoff
We work closely with your incoming MSP for a controlled technical handoff. This prevents coverage gaps while making sure we don’t have access longer than necessary.
Staged approach
We don’t flip a switch on the commencement date and hope for the best. Instead, we give your incoming provider read-only access during the transition period so they can get to know your environment before taking full responsibility.
For example, in Microsoft 365, we can grant them Global Reader permissions. They can see your entire tenant configuration—users, licenses, security settings, SharePoint structure—but they can’t make changes yet. This lets them prepare, ask questions, and develop their transition plan without stepping on our toes while we’re still providing active support.
The same approach applies to other systems. If you have a Meraki network, we can grant dashboard access in view-only mode. If there are other management platforms in your stack, we work with the incoming provider to give them visibility without administrative control.
Kevin notes that incoming MSPs often request this access as early as possible, and we accommodate. “We’ll play ball with that,” he says. “It makes it easier across the board. When the commencement day happens, there’s less confusion.”
Commencement date
On the commencement date, access transfers fully. Your new provider receives administrative credentials, and they’re responsible for removing our access. This includes:
- Microsoft 365 global administrator accounts
- Network infrastructure (firewall, switch, access point admin access)
- Server and virtualization platform credentials
- Backup system management
- Any other administrative accounts we held
We stay in communication with the new provider to confirm removal happens promptly. This protects everyone involved. Nobody wants lingering administrative access that could create security or accountability issues down the road.
Remote management tools
One of the most important technical steps is removing our RMM (remote monitoring and management) tools from your systems. These agents give us deep access to workstations and servers, and they need to come offline at the commencement date.
Before that happens, we typically allow the incoming provider to install their own RMM agents in monitor or audit mode. They can observe your environment and collect data without making changes. On commencement day, their tools go fully active and ours come offline.
This sequence matters. If we remove our tools too early, you lose monitoring and support. If we leave them too long, it creates confusion about who’s responsible for alerts and issues.
Hardware considerations
In most cases, clients own their network equipment—Meraki access points, switches, firewalls—and we simply transfer dashboard management from our portal to theirs.
Backup equipment
Backup appliances are trickier. Kevin shares an example from a client we onboarded. We had a new customer that owned their backup system, but the MSP they were leaving managed it. “They had no way to transfer their backups to us, ” Kevin says. In that case, they had to implement a new backup solution and accept the loss of historical backup data—not ideal, but sometimes unavoidable depending on the systems involved.
Many clients lease Veeam backup boxes from us. During offboarding, we discuss options: you can purchase the hardware if the incoming provider can manage Veeam, or we coordinate retrieval if they’re implementing a different backup solution.
If you own the backup hardware, but we manage the software, we work with the new provider to either transfer management or help export your backup data in a format they can use. The goal is to make sure you don’t lose access to your backups during the transition.
Leased equipment
We typically retrieve leased equipment around the commencement date or shortly after, once we’re certain the new provider’s systems are in place. We don’t want to pull critical infrastructure while you’re still relying on it, but we also can’t leave it running indefinitely after our management contract ends.
After the switch
Once the commencement date passes and your new provider has taken over, our formal support relationship ends. If you reach out for help after that point, it becomes an hourly project-based engagement—the same as working with any IT consultant.
That said, we’re not rigid about small courtesies. If a former client emails with a quick question—something we can answer in a few minutes by checking retained documentation—we’llhelp. But if it requires technician time or troubleshooting, it transitions to billable work.
We also maintain your documentation and backups for 30 days after commencement. Sometimes unexpected things happen, and this allows us to help. It’s a safety net for you and your new provider. After 30 days, we delete our copies.
What makes offboarding go smoothly
The technical steps of offboarding are straightforward when everyone cooperates. The complications are usually related to logistics and professional relationships.
Billing and licensing complexity
Long-term client relationships often accumulate complexity around who owns what licenses and services. Is that Microsoft 365 subscription billed through us, or directly to you? Who holds the vendor relationship for your firewall support contract? Is that SaaS application tied to our reseller agreement?
The longer you’ve been with an MSP, the more intertwined these arrangements can become. Untangling them during offboarding takes time and careful review. This is another reason the 30-60 day window matters—it gives everyone space to identify these dependencies and resolve them properly.
The overlap period
Sometimes clients maintain service with both the outgoing and incoming provider during transition. You might be paying both MSPs for a month while systems are being migrated and tested. This isn’t ideal from a cost perspective, but it’s often the safest approach for business continuity.
We try to minimize this overlap, but we also won’t rush a handoff just to save a few weeks of duplicate billing if it puts your operations at risk.
What you can do to help
Kevin’s advice for clients going through offboarding is simple: stay engaged. Respond to requests for information, make yourself available for scheduled calls, and don’t treat the offboarding process as someone else’s problem.
The clients who make offboarding difficult are usually the ones who disengage completely once they’ve made the decision to leave. They stop responding to emails and miss scheduled calls. This creates gaps—missing credentials, incomplete documentation, unresolved equipment questions. Ultimately, these gaps hurt the client when their new provider needs information we never transferred.
What to ask your current or prospective MSP
If you’re evaluating providers—whether leaving your current MSP or just doing due diligence—here are the questions that reveal how they really operate:
- Who owns the documentation? Can I get a copy anytime I ask?
- What’s the contractual notice period, and can you show me an example timeline?
- How do you handle admin credential transfer?
- What happens to equipment I lease from you?
Providers who dodge these questions or get defensive usually make everything else difficult too.
Why offboarding matters before you onboard
Here’s something we’ve learned over nearly three decades: clients who ask detailed questions about offboarding during the sales process rarely need to leave. They’re the ones who think long-term, plan carefully, and build relationships that last.
When you know you can leave cleanly, you don’t feel trapped. And when you don’t feel trapped, you can focus on the partnership instead of the exit strategy. That’s the kind of relationship we want with every client.
If you’re evaluating IT providers and want to talk with a team that respects your business enough to let you leave well, contact us for a free consultation.
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