Saturday, May 26, 2012

Corporate Support.

Corporate Support can be maddeningly frustrating. You've got 2 basic kinds of clients. Those who understand IT and those who don't. When I say understand I don't mean they can do what I do, I mean they understand that their business depends on their systems and are willing to spend money on their infrastructure.

Those who don't understand, refuse to spend money, then wonder why they're systems are slow, not compatible with newer technology. I get it if a budget doesn't allow for something. I do. What I do not get is when a company is willing to spend twice as much on Hourly repairs to duct tape and jury rig a system rather than upgrade or update something.

I suppose I shouldn't complain, it is companies that do that kind of thing that puts money in my pocket. Its just frustrating when it happens. This is getting a little too close to talking about my job specifically, so I'll step back and broaden the scope a bit.

When I say Corporate Support, I'm not talking about something like Geek Squad (I'll get to them later). I'm talking about the kind of network someone has.

When I say Corporate Support, I'm referring to a Business's Network. It can be a Small Business or a Large Business. To me, a Corporate Network means you have a server and employee's who access that server. It doesn't matter if you have 5 employee's or 50 employees, if its your business, its a corporate network to me.

Why? Well, it's my job to use Technology to Grow your business. Not just fix things when they break. Sure today you've got 5 employee's, but I'm sure you've dreamed about the day when you've got 50 employee's and the additional money that would mean you were making.

If you're a business owner, don't get caught between a Corporate Network and a Home Network. I've seen that. It gets ugly quick. I've got a ex-client (they no longer use our services so I'll mention this), they had a Home Network. I cannot begin to imagine how much money they spent having us come out and get their systems to talk to one another, and every time... each tech that came out (including the owner of my company) told them 'All this would go away if you had  a server'. I think at the time we'd quoted them a low end system, under 2 thousand (it still had redundant power supplies and hard drives). But week after week, they would call us back out and have us perform the same steps to get their Workgrouped PC's to talk to one another. All told they probably spent half the cost of a Server just on us coming out,  and if you add in the cost of their internal labor and loss of productivity they probably lost more money than a much higher end server we quoted them would have cost.

If a tech tells you that you need something, you probably need it. If a salesperson tells you that you need something... as a tech, they're the ones that has to install it, they'd know better than the salesperson. Ask the tech anyways, the salesperson knows what the system says it can do in a perfect lab environment. The tech knows what it will do in YOUR environment.

Wrapping up for this, Sometimes you have to spend money to save money.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks for the great info, Matt. You rock!

    ~Nancy Jill
    "Queen of Afternoon Tea"

    ReplyDelete