|
|
Pro-active support
Background
This company has been in business for four years and during that time have grown significantly. They now occupy premises in an out of town barn conversion and employ around 20 staff, 6 of whom make up a remote home-based sales force.
A friend of the family had been providing ad hoc IT support and had installed a server with Microsoft Small Business Server 2000. Occasional evening and weekend visits kept things ticking along as the systems continued to expand.
The Problem
While the company was small this arrangement had sufficed. However, with the growth came an ever-increasing reliance on the systems to perform well and continuously. Unfortunately this was brought home with a bang when the server ran out of disk space late one morning in August 2004, bringing the entire operation to a halt. Some hasty housekeeping by the users provided a couple of hours reprieve before the server crashed again leaving 10 staff with nothing to do and all email communications disconnected.
I spent two hours on-site that evening and quickly found the root cause of the problem. A temporary fix was implemented until a proper resolution could be put in place at a more convenient time. I also highlighted some failing hardware which was another time bomb waiting in the wings!
The Solution
Brite Consulting now provides a complete support service for the IT systems in the business. This consists of a contract that provides the following:
- Half-day on-site visit every month for pre-emptive maintenance activities. This ensures that the occurrence of predictable problems can be minimised or eliminated altogether. There are always other jobs that need to be done at this time, eg setting up a new printer, upgrading the internet banking or payroll software, moving PCs to different locations etc.
- Remote access to the server and user's computers via a secure VPN connection over the company's broadband Internet connection. Most systems management jobs can be carried out without the need for a journey to the office.
- Daily automated reporting of the server and overnight backup status. When a problem has occurred I have often diagnosed and fixed it via remote connection before the client was aware it had occurred.
- Access to their own part-time IT manager. Whilst I am not full-time, the nature of our relationship means that I am able to offer strategic advice and suggestions for ways in which IT systems can improve the business.
As well as the routine type of support described above, I have also delivered additional fixed price project work including:
- Rationalising multiple email systems into one easily managed single system.
- Implementation of remote access to the financial systems from home for the business owners.
- Implementation of broadband based VPN access to the office systems for the home-based sales force.
- Staff training in the use of Excel/Word/Outlook/Goldmine.
If your business needs this type of help and support, please contact us.
|
|
