Frequently Asked Questions
You can see the eyes of most senior members of your staff glaze over when someone starts to talk about IT. And it’s no wonder - the talk is almost always techy, rarely business -- which operating system, what new gadget, which latest acronym, etc. It isn’t that it’s hard to understand; it’s that it’s hard to care about. Here are some of the questions we think are relevant when you’re thinking about your IT infrastructure management.
Why does IT need management?What are you doing about backups – particularly your email files and all those files kept on each individual PC? What about security? Do you ever get viruses? Can someone hack into your systems? How often does your system or network crash? Why? Should you upgrade your software or hardware? Why or why not? How can you get the biggest performance improvement for a reasonable cost? What are you really spending on IT? Is it too much or not enough?
Those are all questions you should ask whoever is responsible for your IT. If things have been going pretty well, we’ll bet you’ll find that someone pretty good is, in fact, managing it. Wouldn’t you rather have him or her contributing more to the really important parts of your business?
If things haven’t been so good, that’s an answer too.
Why can’t I just hire a good IT person?Because, ultimately, what you need is the range of skills found in an absolute minimum of three and up to six skilled specialists, coordinated by a competent manager and supported by a set of technological tools, practices and processes. Some of the time you don’t need very much at all: someone to hand-hold more timid users, set up new systems, run a little cable, etc. It’s this IT-light requirement for which many companies hire. At other times, however, you need someone with the experience and expertise to tell you when upgrading a key hardware or software component is of business benefit, or when a significant change to IT architecture makes good business sense and why. And all those people also need management - someone who finds the right experts, vets their solution, designs and enforces standards and best practices, manages the continued learning of the team and double checks at the end of any project to see nothing was destabilized. These diverse skills and disciplines just do not occur in one or two people.
How do I know if our present service provider is doing a good job?If you have the question, the likely answer is “no.” There are standards for security, reliability and availability and most firms we serve require either a high standard or the highest standard. If you have a concern, take advantage of our no-fee, no-obligation initial assessment for qualified potential clients. We can show you with data the performance of your IT infrastructure and whether you’re meeting established standards or not.
IT isn’t rocket science. All my folks are sophisticated and support themselves.Pay them well too, we’ll bet. Of course engineers and people with technical skills or background can do some IT themselves. They can also probably do lots of other non-critical work. The issue, of course, isn’t what they can do, but rather what they should do to best accomplish your business strategy. If they’re worth having at all they are both busy and talented, and you need them doing what’s real work for them, not IT. Besides, we’ll bet if you check you’ll find each of them has his/her own entirely unique ideas about how IT should be done. And that’s definitely not a good thing for the stability and performance of the overall infrastructure.
That’s all well and good but we can’t afford that kind of support.Most of our clients discover that we cost about what they were spending previously, sometimes less. And we deliver much better, more consistent, well managed business results. Our fees on a per user basis are lower than industry standard as reported by Microsoft for organizations of the size we support. For a context function such as IT, the goal is to achieve market-standard for the level of performance you choose.
How do I know we can trust you?Contact us and let us talk business with you. We promise a frank discussion of how we might help you meet your objectives. If we aren’t confident we’re a fit for you, we’ll tell you that up front. In our business the most costly, damaging event is an unsatisfied client.
