Well as you all know, when calling on a customer you have never meet before, selling Managed Services, you must have the skin of an armadillo, and the courage to continue, rejection after rejection.  It can only make you stronger, or crazier, whichever comes first.  After being in Sales all my adult life, and having a rather easy time being successful, getting into a field that is ever so changing (it seems daily), can be mind boggling at times.  Things I thought I knew about networks and computing in general are very benign.  The past few months in this industry, I have become a sponge learning all that I can.  What I’ve really learned is how much money most companies are wasting by having an “IN-House” IT department, or the ones that have none at all.

 Managed services, if you can get your foot in the door, not only helps you and your company to make a living, but really helps a business owner save a tremendous amount of money. Let me try to explain in my best “Street Smart Business Ideas”. First take a company of 10 to 50 users (PC workstations), they have Chad, the computer guru, that’s been hacking and playing on computers since he was 13.  He’s now 30 and making $5000.00 per month as the “head of the IT department”. He‘s usually busy all day long because most of the computers have a problem at least once a day. This is unfortunately because he “thinks he knows more than he does”, no offences to Chad, but you know the tech I’m talking about.  Now as a business owner, if he had just a few minutes to asses what’s going on with his company, trying to cut all the costs he can in these trying times, he has no idea of outsourcing his IT department, to Kotori Technologies’ My IT Department.  Let’s say for $4000.00 per month, you can have an IT department outsourced and Managed Service without anyone else in the company who is getting paid to do nothing more than “mess with the computers all day”.  Be able to rest easy knowing all your data is safe from disasters, monitored 24/7 and “Down time Free”. That would be worth way more than just the savings of $12,000.00 a year that was going to Chad, after add in the money from the down time from the other employees when they weren’t able to do the job they are paid to do.

 Now let’s take the example of the smaller company that has less than 10 workstations, but a very busy office. The office manager Sally is paid to be an office manager; not an IT Tech. She has absolutely no knowledge of networks, but is learning fast on her own. Everyday it’s something new, if it’s a printer not working, a slow internet day, or just PC’s freezing.  She is now spending most of her day “messing with the computers” and not getting her job done. Not only is it costing you money, but your customers are suffering from lack of customer service that Sally does want to do, but can’t. Here’s where Kotori Technologies’ My IT Department comes in.  Maybe we can help this company for $1000.00 per month. How much would the owner save throughout the year? How much would it cost him if all the data was destroyed through a disaster? How much is he spending with Sally wearing 12 hats in the office? But let’s remember it’s not all about cost saving, although that is important to the owner and business, it’s also about efficiency.

For many people December is the most favorable month of all.  It is the month of celebration and a time to enjoy family, friends, giving gifts, and bringing in a new year.  For the small business owner, December can also be a painful time of the year.  Money, money, money...too much going out and not enough coming in.  Businesses in the Low Country have tightened down on their spending, cut cost, cut payroll, screen invoices, and have cut out marketing or have found new creative ideas to market with little to no cost. Many businesses have completely cut out their IT spending.
Let’s look at the Computer and Network spending. Information Technology is not to be a burden, but to make your job and the jobs of your employees easier. The idea is to use technology as an advantage that allows your company to accomplish more and produce it more effectively.
Think about it, if one computer fails, how much will it really cost you? An invoice from your IT company? Typically that is not half of the issue.  The employee spends 30 minutes trying to figure out what happened to the PC. Then she asks her coworker who spends another 30 minutes trying to help.  Then they call in the office manager or someone else that know more about computers and networks.  This takes up even more time. Finally, they get approval (another 30 minutes) to call their IT company. They accept the call, however all of their technicians are on-site or with other clients, so there is a 45 minute delay before they can respond, due to escalation procedures. The technician finishes his appointment and tries to access the computer remotely (30 minutes), and he is denied. He then leaves to travel to your office. (30 minutes) He arrives on site, investigates the situation and tries to boot up the computer several ways. (30 minutes) He narrows the problem to the hard drive. He then has to drive back to the computer company’s warehouse to pick up a new hard drive. (Another 30 minutes) He brings the crashed computer with him to install the hard drive at their office. He then spends 3 hours installing Windows on the new hard drive. By now, it is after 5:00, so he goes home for the night and the next morning, he drives back to your office (30 minutes) and spends another 3 hours installing the programs and personal settings onto the new hard drive. Assuming everything went without a problem, this is at least 10 ½ hours. What was your employee doing during that time? (You paid her for the full day and a half) What did she not accomplish that could have been billed to your clients?
Be glad this was just one computer, if it had been your server, it would have affected your entire staff and your business was probably closed for at least two days. (Hard drives on servers take MUCH longer to replace.)
This scenario could have been avoided, along with many others. This was what we refer to as a “break-fix” example. This client also pays their IT company by the hour to fix their computers when they break. However, we offer an “all you can eat” preventative program. If the client had been on this program, we would have monitored the hard drives of all the computers, and realized three weeks ago that this hard drive was going to crash, and would have had it replaced with an hour’s work. (We could have copied all the programs from the old hard drive before it crashed.) This client also pays us a flat monthly fee to monitor and fix their computers, so their bill for the month would be less than the previous clients.
This “all you can eat” program also allows us to replace and update your computers and servers as needed to prevent crashes and maximize uptime and profitability.
If you want a way to reduce your IT costs, give us a call and let us know you want the “All You Can Eat”.