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Tag: IT Support

Why The Man With The Van Is Redundant

It is an inescapable reality that most businesses rely heavily on technology, and of the many challenges facing the small business owner many of these relate to IT – issues such as “Who manages your IT? and How do you deal with IT support and maintenance?

A multi-national corporation with over 1,000 employees has the budget to hire its own IT team. But what about smaller companies? The ongoing problem for the small business owner is how to get effective, cost-efficient support for their technology platform. Many treat IT support and maintenance in the same way as dealing with car maintenance – for example: a printer isn’t working/a tire is flat so call the IT support guy/garage.

The “man with the van” may provide a solution to the immediate problem, but that is ALL he does because his service is reactive.

If your business is reliant on IT please consider the following critical questions:

[1] How long can your business survive without key data?

How long would your business last if you experienced a hard drive failure? Imagine losing important customer files and trying to explain to your clients how this happened. If your immediate response to this question is to say: “But we back up our data regularly!” – sure you may have a back up strategy but do you regularly test your strategy to ensure that you are 100% sure you are able to recover your data in the event of a major disaster or loss.

Statistics show that 60% of backups are incomplete, and 50% of restores failed.

[2] How do you protect the “crown jewels” of your business?

How do you protect commercially sensitive data? How do you protect client data held on your computers?

Do you realise that every third party who has access to your IT systems potentially has access to all of your secrets?

What level of security assessment do you undertake on any third-party you bring into your company to undertake IT support and maintenance?

[3] Are you maximising your ROI in your IT assets?

Are your computers up-to-date for necessary patches, security issues and updates?
Do you know the exact the locations, counts and disposition of all of your IT assets?
How do you know which of your hardware and software needs updating, upgrading or replacing?
Are you over-licensed on software and thus wasting money?
How do you know that you are getting your money’s worth from independent consultants and vendors?

The Solution

The fundamental issue with the traditional “man with the van” approach to IT support and maintenance is that it is reactive.

The solution is to employ an approach and a methodology that anticipates potential problems BEFORE they become an issue and that implements an automated solution in the background.

This solution is provided by partnering with an IT management and support service who provide a Remote Management and Monitoring [RMM] service incorporating a proprietary technology that:

Detects problems and identifies potential hazards before they ever impact your company.
Provides 24/7 real-time systems status monitoring updates every five minutes.
Provides continual updates regarding the state of hardware and software, including logs, performance metrics, patches, antivirus and more.
Is continually watching for unusual events, and many of these have fully automated responses.

This proactive solution is the complete reverse of the usual approach of acting AFTER a problem occurs.

This results in a significant increase in productivity, as problems are rectified in the background, without interrupting users, and before they escalate and become a major issue.

Whilst the technology that provides this service is complex and sophisticated, the connection of your business to this service is incredibly simple involving no more than 3 clicks of a mouse!

PASR Technologies provide this service and we would be delighted to speak with you to understand your issues and to explain more about how your business could benefit from this solution.

Servicing businesses from 10 to up to 200 employees, our clients range from local SMEs through to regional offices of larger MNCs, and include airlines.

At PASR Technologies, we solve your IT problems before you even realize you have one!

The True Cost Of “One-Off” IT Support

To many small business owners it may seem perfectly logical to bring in an IT support specialist as and when you have an identified need. But the reality is that the one-off approach to IT support issues leaves many holes and doubts and it can prove expensive.

We work with business owners and senior management of organizations with less that 200 staff providing a one-stop shop for all their IT infrastructure needs. We have been doing since 1996. Over this time we regularly come across the same, repeated concerns facing SME management. Regardless of business sector, the same challenges continue to crop up. One of the big recurring issues is to do with the cost – the true cost – of one-off IT support.

“We don’t know what we don’t know…”

This issue of the true cost of one-off support falls into the “we don’t know what we don’t know” category.

For many owners of small businesses, dealing with IT support and maintenance is the same as dealing with car maintenance. In other words, it’s OK with the “known knowns” e.g. a printer isn’t working/a tire is flat, BUT how do you deal with the “unknown unknowns”? How do you deal with the problems that I don’t know about, like security, malware protection, data leakage?

A lack of consistency leads to cost in-efficiency

Over reliance on “one-off” support can expensive. Here is a typical scenario: You have a problem, for example User A can’t print, so you get external technical support to come in and fix it. They update the printer software and get User A printing and leave. BUT, the very next day, Users B & C can’t print either, so you call the IT support people back in again for yet another fix ….AND yet another fee!

The business impact of your over-reliance on one-off support means that you do not have the consistency and cost efficiency of a centralised and holistic approach that would instead install printers centrally, and roll out appropriate changes and updates to all users via a centralised policy.

Two further examples of how the small business owner’s lack of knowledge is a big exposure for the business:

[1] You bring in external IT support to solve a problem and yet they break other components…and you have know way of knowing.

[2] You can’t determine whether quotes to repair/upgrade are valid, realistic and appropriate.

If you would like to discuss this issue and what it means for your business, please get in touch. Since inception in 1996, PASR Technologies has been providing SME business owners with a level of service and support to the SME business owner that is typically only directly available in very large organisations.