Consider a hypothetical Minnesota manufacturer with a Twin Cities headquarters and a plant that runs evening shifts. Headquarters IT and an external provider share support. If network equipment fails after the office closes, they need to know who can investigate remotely, who can access the equipment and who can authorize a site visit.
Those answers may differ from the arrangements at headquarters. A site worksheet records the hours, contacts, vendors and support responsibilities for each facility so the teams do not have to work them out during an outage.
Use the worksheet below for each site, then check the handoffs between the people and organizations involved.
Identify the teams involved at each site
Consider these four groups where they apply. Some sites have their own IT staff; others may not use an external support provider. Adapt the list to the actual arrangement.
- Headquarters IT. Identify the corporate systems, standards, approvals and budgets it manages, and any work retained by site IT.
- Site staff. Name the people available locally, their hours and the actions they are trained and authorized to perform.
- The support provider. Record its contracted remote support, monitoring or field responsibilities for this location.
- Local vendors. Include connectivity, equipment, application or facilities providers whose support may be needed, with their hours and authorized contacts.
A co-managed responsibility matrix by IT function records who handles work such as endpoints or backups. The site worksheet adds the local details: operating hours, physical access, vendor contacts and field support. If you are sharing work with a provider, our co-managed IT overview explains the broader arrangement.
The site worksheet
Complete one worksheet per facility, including headquarters, with the people who know that site. Mark unknown information as unresolved and assign someone to obtain it. Do not treat an empty field as an agreed exclusion.
| Field | Your answer |
|---|---|
| Location (name, address, what happens there) | |
| Operating hours and time zone (include shifts and weekend operations) | |
| Critical systems at this site (what stops the site if it fails: ERP, production equipment, point of care, phones, warehouse system) | |
| Connectivity (ISP, circuit type, backup path if any, who holds the account) | |
| Local contact (name, role, hours, and what they are able and authorized to do) | |
| Remote support path (how a user at this site reaches support, and during which hours) | |
| Field support arrangement (who comes on site, how they get access, how it is requested) | |
| Vendors (each vendor, what they cover, support hours, who holds the contract, who may open a ticket) | |
| Escalation (who is called, in what order, for issues at this site outside business hours) | |
| Approved maintenance windows (when changes and patching are allowed here, and who approves exceptions) |
Two fields deserve more attention than they usually get.
Local contact. Record availability, access and authority as well as a name and phone number. Can this person admit an approved technician or identify the affected equipment? Any hands-on task must be appropriate to their training and the site’s safety rules. Do not assume a site contact can restart production or clinical equipment.
Maintenance windows. Changes suitable for an office schedule may interrupt another site’s operations. Record permitted windows, systems affected and exception approvals. Confirm that the responsible teams and their tooling use the agreed schedule.
Check the handoffs
Review how work moves between the groups listed for each location. The following questions help test whether the arrangements are usable.
Site staff to support. Does a user contact the provider, site IT or headquarters? Document the route, including the urgent-incident path, and make it accessible to staff on each shift. Check that someone will receive the request during the site’s operating hours.
Provider to local vendor. Confirm the vendor’s authorization requirements for raising and managing a support request. Record who is authorized, how that person can be reached and what happens outside the vendor’s support hours.
Headquarters IT to site staff. Write down which systems are monitored, who receives the alerts and which problems depend on a person reporting them. Confirm that site staff know what to report and through which route.
Provider to headquarters IT, after hours. Name the internal escalation role and keep the contact list current. Agree permitted actions, fallback contacts and limits if the primary contact is unavailable.
Shifts and outstate sites
Review shift coverage and travel-dependent support separately.
Second and third shift. Identify the work that support can handle remotely and the incidents that may need a trained person on site. Define urgent escalation and any approved local actions in a site-specific runbook. Record available spares and who is authorized to use them; do not substitute untrained staff for specialist or safety-critical work.
Sites far from headquarters. Confirm what field support is available at the actual address and during the required hours. Options to evaluate include scheduled visits, contracted local support and appropriate spares. Record any response commitment and its conditions for that location instead of assuming the headquarters arrangement applies statewide.
Include sites outside Minnesota. Confirm their teams, vendors, hours and access requirements separately, including any restrictions that affect the proposed support model.
An example from a Minnesota manufacturer
Intricon, a medical device and life sciences manufacturer in Arden Hills, engaged Virteva in late 2023 when its IT department included internal team members and several external providers, and it needed to support a 24x7x365 operation across multiple continents. According to Intricon’s published case study, the engagement began with an IT maturity assessment, then brought service desk, end-user computing, managed security, and network and infrastructure services under one provider, and enabled support for Intricon’s U.S. and Far East teams.
The case illustrates support across locations and time zones. It does not document a site-by-site responsibility matrix or establish how any particular facility’s field support was arranged.
Planning support with Virteva
Virteva provides managed and co-managed IT for Minnesota organizations from its Minnetonka headquarters. Include all your locations when discussing an engagement, including sites outside Minnesota, so the available coverage and any limits can be confirmed for each one.
For manufacturers specifically, this article on 24/7 manufacturing IT support covers the shift-coverage question in more depth.
Frequently asked questions
Should the provider fill in the site worksheets, or should we? Assign an internal owner to coordinate the worksheet with site contacts, IT, the provider and relevant vendors. Each party should confirm the information it knows and the responsibilities it accepts. The provider may help collect information, but site details still need validation.
How often should the worksheets be reviewed? Update them when hours, contacts, vendors, systems or responsibilities change. Agree a periodic review as a backstop; choose a frequency appropriate to how quickly the sites change.
What if a site has no reliable local contact? Assign someone to resolve the gap. Options may include an approved backup contact or contracted local support. If the resulting coverage has limits, document them and have the responsible business and IT owners assess whether those limits are acceptable.
Next step
To discuss support across your locations, contact Virteva with your site list, operating hours and the responsibilities you want help covering.
