introduction

Like so many other businesses, you have made significant investments in what has become the lifeblood of your business, your computer systems. From workstations to laptops and servers, and from software applications to printers and Internet connections, you can’t afford to be down for even a minute. Finding a trusted professional to keep you running reliably and safely can be a difficult and costly trial-and-error exercise, and if you’re lucky, when they leave they’ll have fixed more than damaged Registrierte deutsche Lizenz what you’re on end up costing even more money. It’s not economic to foot the bill for on-the-job training for a supposed computer pro. You want someone who understands your needs and knows how to address them.

All of my clients have gone through this headache-inducing process. From the time they ask their current IT staff for a fix, it’s days before they get a response, and a few more days before someone actually shows up to fix the problem. The person who arrives is often underexperienced, leaving a trail of problems in their wake. I remember in the old cartoons when the severely short-sighted Mr. Magoo would leave a trail of accidents in his rear-view mirror as he drove down the street without a care in the world. I’m sure we’ve all felt that way at various vendors we’ve worked with over the years. Many of them are the biggest in their field and we wonder how they ever got so big?

To save you the trouble of hiring a Mr. Magoo , I offer this article with some helpful information on how to find and hire a trustworthy, competent, and affordable IT support company

The value of referrals

I would never eat at C would I?

I once made the mistake of telling someone not to go to a restaurant unless someone recommended it. “Oh, don’t be afraid to try something new,” she admonished. I just smiled and nodded as I figured it’s not about trying new things, it’s about not having to pay for something I didn’t enjoy. Likewise, when I need a new dentist or mechanic, I always ask friends, family, or co-workers who they use and if they are happy with the service. I highly recommend doing the same when it comes to getting support for your office computers. Ask other business owners in your profession if they are satisfied with their IT support company. If you belong to a local professional organization, ask your clubmates if they can suggest someone. Trust me; The company you recommend will greatly appreciate the recommendation.

In the late 1990s, a local Los Angeles news show covered the filthy conditions in some restaurant kitchens using a hidden camera. Grainy video showed the most extreme violations of common kitchen hygiene practices, not to mention public health codes. The pictures alone were sickening enough and in order not to upset you I will not go into detail about the violations. The public outcry has led to restaurants and even shops selling groceries being required to show the letter grade from their most recent city inspection. Virtually overnight, small white billboards with large blue A, B or, heaven forbid, C were prominently displayed in restaurant windows and even in gas station convenience stores across the city. You never see a D or lower because these places have to keep their doors closed until they’ve cleaned up their act and passed a subsequent inspection. It’s rare to see anything lower than an A, and if you did, would you eat there? Probably not. Personally, I need the little blue A, this referral from the health department, as confirmation that I won’t be spending the night in the bathroom.

Likewise, you should not hire an IT provider that is not recommended by someone you trust and who is rated no worse than A on their virtual certificate. I don’t recommend trusting online reviews from places like Yelp or Yahoo Local, where it’s too easy for vendors to post false, rave reviews about themselves or discredit their competition. Another reason I don’t trust them is that shortly after I noticed advertisements offering to pay people to write product reviews, customers’ product ratings at various retailers seemed to go up . Coincidence maybe, but I can’t imagine going online to Macys.com to write a review about the underwear I bought last week, whether it was comfortable or not.

There are some websites that could be a little more credible, such as B. AngiesList.com, where consumers pay an annual fee for the privilege of posting and reading reviews of vendors. Ideally, this reduces the opportunity for self-promotion and abuse, but I’m not sure it’s worth a monthly fee.

So unless you like a specific vendor verification website, I would stick to recommendations from more traditional sources that you know and trust.

Verification of Candidates

If you called the first person someone referred you to and it worked, great! If you have a list of possible vendors, that’s good too, but it’s time to carefully narrow your choices to the type of organizations that can meet your needs without breaking the bank.

If finances allow and your business is so large that you feel only IBM Consulting can meet your needs, remember that large IT companies have high overhead. When they boast a thousand employees, huge customers, and a big, shiny office building, think about the hourly rates they have to charge you to keep up all that overhead.

Instead, look for smaller, local businesses that are hungry for your business but have an established, happy clientele. You are likely to have a more personal experience as well as a greater opportunity to negotiate fees, terms, etc. Interview them the same way you would a potential full-time employee. Receive a list of references and even the resumes of the technicians who would be Registrierte deutsche Lizenz assigned to service your environment. Check their references and, if an IT vendor has a customer reference posted on their website, call that customer for more information. You may find out that things have changed and they aren’t as happy since the testimony was given, or that while their business and computer systems are good, they are Macs and you need a PC guru. Hopefully you will find that they have nothing but praise and will continue to recommend them to anyone and everyone. It’s worth the call. As well as checking basic credentials, here are other areas to examine to ensure their competency:

Are they competent to deal with what you have?

Ask them to demonstrate they are proficient in the software and hardware your company uses.
I really like my mechanic Mike. It does a great job on my family’s home cars, but if one day I have a mid-life crisis and go nuts in a German sports car. Hopefully Mike can wait, but if not I’ll ask him for a recommendation from someone who can. Imagine you’ve finally settled on a company you like, but when the technician shows up, he’s staring blankly at your PC and saying, “I’m really more of a Mac guy.” Keep that in mind before you start phoning around to see which company is giving you the warmth and fuzzies , make a list of the software and equipment you expect to be supported, and go through them during the interview. Ask them for specific examples of when and how they improved networks like yours. Their answer should give you an idea of their level of proficiency with your computer, server, email , financial, or accounting platform.

Familiarity with your industry

If you have highly specialized systems, look for companies that serve your niche.

To a certain extent, the nature of a particular company is irrelevant to what IT people do. The accounting staffing firm is likely running what the insurance guy next door has: HP or Dell hardware running Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office, QuickBooks, etc. with a T1, DSL, or cable modem to the Internet. The staffing firm will run a recruiter-specific software application, such as ProSearch, while the insurance worker’s primary production application is Goldmine, or a web-based solution such as SalesForce.com. Any IT guy worth his salt can take a quick look at this, read a little, and have enough information to run it reliably. Businesses such as retailers or law firms may have custom or obsolete (old and expired) software that requires a greater understanding to maintain. It can break in so many different ways that only someone with extensive experience with that particular product or its basics can find a quick and effective fix in the event of a failure. With a reasonable budget and knowledge, the best engineers will configure it with redundancy and failover mechanisms so that when it breaks it is transparent to the end users and there is no loss of productivity.
If you’re running shrink-wrapped software like Windows, Office, and QuickBooks, it doesn’t matter if the new IT support provider isn’t immediately familiar with your marketing business, as long as they have experience with the software you’re running it on. (They should be interested in understanding your business, which I’ll cover in the next section.) If you’re a securities broker with an SDLC card for your DTCC solution, it would be helpful to hire someone with a similar customer base to your line of business Work. If that particular communications link to Wall Street goes down, the last thing you want is your IT rep scratching their heads and searching Google for error codes.