From PC Repair to Network Support
I’ve been in the computer industry for more than 15 years. The punchline I’ve used for many years is that my dad always had a computer around the house. I would tinker with it enough to break it, so I had to get very good at fixing it before he got home from work on any given day.
Changes in my career, generally, have been the result of my advancement in the industry, not changes in the industry itself.
[Quick history: I started by fixing friends' and family's computers. I got my first real job building and servicing PCs at PC Systems in Delray Beach, FL before I could even drive. Next, I started my first company, Byte Technologies, doing small office/home office network setups in West Palm Beach, FL. Then, I moved on to IKON Office Solutions as one of their Sr. Network Engineers. Finally, about eight years ago, I started Steinhoff Consulting , which was renamed DedicatedIT earlier this year.]
Network Support was Changing
Just like in any industry, changes do happen. Most changes are small, however. Around 2003-2004, there was a major shift in our industry to augment standard, ‘break-fix’ services with proactive, fixed-fee ‘managed services’.
The biggest benefit to technology companies was the predictable income that a monthly contract allowed. For the first time, it allowed us to budget our expenses, fuel regular growth and staff up appropriately. Our clients appreciated the fact that response times could now be guaranteed, that we had the ability to provide remote support – that didn’t require them to push all the buttons for us – and that we were able to collect more detailed information about their systems than we had been able to before.
Growing Pains and Identity Crisis
It was 2005 and, by this point, many of us staffed up to handle our new model of business and started calling ourselves ‘Managed Services Providers’, even though we still provided break-fix services. It created a confusing message to our prospects and clients, and worse yet, our employees.
A sales person, meeting with existing clients, was trying to convert them from break-fix to managed services. He would present all the wonderful reasons to change to this new managed services model; awesome response times, access to some of the best network engineers in the area, nearly instantaneous remote support, and much, much more! [Act now, and you get the slicer and dicer, too!]
The clients looked at him with confusion and would point out that, “I already get all that, why would I change?”
They were right. Unfortunately, it took another three years for me to fully understand the problem and another year after that to have the guts to actually fix it properly and finally.
RIP: The Death of Break-fix Network Support
The problem was that we were incurring the much greater expense of running a managed services business, yet providing the benefits to all clients regardless of whether they were under official contract or not. We would justify it numerous ways: ‘They’ve been a client forever’; ‘We just need to prove the value to them, and they will sign a contract’; ‘just this once’ ; and the longest hold out – ‘they have a server down, and it’s an emergency.’
Even though we wanted to provide the benefits of managed services to all of our clients, running our business this way was just too costly.
Are we Nuts? In this Economy?
It’s really hard to say, “No’, I can’t send someone out there”, to businessman who does have an emergency with a primary server down. It’s especially hard, when the client is willing to pay nearly anything to get the server back up and running. Depending on how critical the issue was, the cost usually was much more than what the contract would have cost them… not to mention that, most likely, the client would not be in this situation in the first place if we were managing the network.
In early 2009, DedicatedIT decided that it would phase out all non-managed services clients and began saying “no” to, what used to be, perfectly good business for us.
Are we nuts? Time will tell…
We can tell you that sales and marketing messages are much more clear, stress levels are down and net income is up.
I’m interested in hearing your stories of taking large, yet calculated, gambles in your businesses. Please leave me a comment below.
