For most small businesses, technology represents a significant investment. Business owners recognize the central role that technology plays in their companies, but often lack confidence that they’ll actually receive the benefits promised – having been burned by a poorly implemented system or an unreliable IT support company that can’t seem to ever “fix” the issue at-hand (let alone prevent it from happening in the first place).

The prevailing model of waiting until something breaks and then calling the IT support company – aptly named “break/fix” – just doesn’t work. The disruptions, downtime, loss of productivity, and expense – all too common under this reactive model – are simply unacceptable, especially in today’s business environment. Yet, every day small businesses turn to IT support companies that only provide reactive service and suffer the consequences

• Problems are remediated when they become catastrophic events that result in downtime and lost productivity, frustrating business owners and staff.
• Resolving an IT issue when a disruption has occurred is innately difficult and costly.
• It’s easy to make poor decisions when the pressure is on—shortsighted decisions focus on relieving the immediate pain, and often create longer term headaches that then cause even more downtime and disruption.
• IT costs are unpredictable because you never know what’s about to break. This unpredictability in turns causes cash flow problems.
• Very little planning and thinking goes into the system beyond what is perceived as the most immediate need. Systems are implemented without a clear strategy, which leads to instability and ultimately doesn’t provide much value to the actual business.
• The IT support company is rewarded when you experience downtime and has no real incentive to prevent problems from occurring in the first place.

The reactive “break/fix” model creates what we call the “negative feedback loop” which disrupts business and destroys productivity.

So, what’s the solution? Managed services.

“Managed services” means taking a proactive and comprehensive approach to managing your IT environment.

At X-BAR, we accomplish this through a combination of people, process, and technology to holistically manage your company’s technology, rather than just responding to the technology crisis at-hand. Specialized tools allow us to monitor and manage your network, servers, and workstations. Standardized processes and best practices ensure consistent results over time. And a dedicated support team and helpdesk are available to respond quickly when issues do come up, using remote support tools to solve issues right from our own office. The result is more stable systems, reduced IT support costs, and higher staff productivity.

Our proactive, managed services approach to IT support reverses the “negative feedback loop” and allows companies to stay focused on the success of their core business.

Contact us today to find out how a managed services approach to IT support can dramatically improve your relationship with technology.

Posted by Brad Benner in Managed Services on 27 August 2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.