GEEKNOTE: We talked about customer service last week and touched on the idea of managed IT briefly. This week we will go into a little more detail.
The best way to describe the difference between conventional computer service and repairs and managed IT is to compare it to health care: You can wait to get sick and then head for the emergency room to get medical attention or you can sign up with a family physician to see you on a regular basis and, hopefully, keep you from getting so sick that you need expensive medical care.
With computers, most folks have waited until something breaks and then started looking for someone to fix things. This is less than optimal for several reasons, including the time lost to unexpected computer failures, the need to drop everything to find someone to repair the computer, the cost of the repairs themselves (often on an "emergency" basis), and lost data from not planning ahead.
In a managed IT setting, your IT advisor helps you avoid expensive downtime by helping you pick the right antivirus software to immunize your computers, plans for replacement of old machines before they die, and advises you on other IT issues, such as how to make sure that your critical data is backed up.
This is very much like the way our landlord has the A/C guys show up regularly to change out filters and do other preventive maintenance on the air handlers at our office. I'm happy to see them because I know that it is less likely I'll be sweating or freezing because of a hardware failure.
How involved all of this is in a computer context depends on what sort of needs you have. Obviously, a big corporate network is going to be more complicated than a home user with a single computer.
A number of years ago, we came up with a "Safe Computing Package" for our consumer clients that included both antivirus software and in-shop service to encourage folks to bring their computers in for regular checkups. Little things like regularly blowing the dust and pet hair clogging up the CPU fan can make a huge difference in how long a computer lasts.
We've expanded that into three different packages with varying benefits tied to each one. The key for our clients is that it provides a fixed price up front for regular service and the key for us is that we make sure that the computer has a solid AV solution in place, we can run diagnostics and routine service on the computers regularly (including "dust bunny evictions), and our clients are more inclined to pick up the phone and call immediately if something doesn't seem quite right. Many problems, including some malware infections, are quickly and easily fixed when caught early.
More recently, we've been offering complete network monitoring and fully managed IT solutions for our corporate clients. It works for the clients because it levels out IT expenses and minimizes downtime. It works for us because we can get ahead of potential problems before they become REAL problems.
I mentioned our remote capabilities last week. The ability to easily jump onto a client's machine remotely saves quite a bit of time and money that would otherwise be spent going onsite. Likewise, stabilizing a network, locking things down, and documenting everything makes it easier for us to handle issues quickly.
Getting a business that is used to dealing with computer problems on a crisis basis to understand the value of retaining us to manage their IT is sometimes difficult. Once we get a business owner to let us get them set up right and then monitor their network, they are generally amazed that things get dramatically better. Problems just don't seem to happen as often. It is not magic. It is managed IT at work and it does NOT require us to have a tech living at a client's place of business trying to keep things held together with duct tape.
We've been busy updating our internal processes as we've picked up more managed IT customers. Most of the changes aren't obvious, but they are improving how responsive we can be for our clients.
We redesigned our web presence earlier this year, breaking our our corporate and consumer services into separate websites that have appropriate information for corporate clients and consumers respectively. The contact forms track us down both faster and more reliably than before.
We've standardized the antivirus solutions included in our Safe Computing Packages to F-Secure's award winning products. We also offer F-Secure's excellent corporate solutions to our business clients.
We've completely revamped our reporting for our managed customers. Included are some absolutely amazing reports that detail pretty much everything you might want to know about a business network.
More recently, we've upgraded our trouble ticket system, opening it up for select corporate clients to be able to directly enter tickets and track the tickets through to completion. We anticipate that all of our managed IT corporate clients will have access to this system within the next few weeks.
Is managed IT for everyone? Perhaps not, but if you are a business owner who is spending too much time messing with computers and not enough making money, then we should talk.
Rob Marlowe, Senior Geek
Gulfcoast Networking, Inc.
http://www.gulfcoastnetworking.com
