What are your support company ACTUALLY doing for you?

I had a meeting today with an account manager of a large IT Support company. We were discussing the good things and bad things that her employer did and how good or badly they support their clients.

One matter which got raised was to do with backup monitoring and how badly her existing employers did this. I was shocked but not at all surprised. Many companies offer a full range of what are termed as 'managed services'. A Managed Service is a concept where the provider takes over the control of the monitoring of your IT systems and fixes the problems before you even know about it.

This is great and a worthwhile service to have, we offer it ourselves. The problem arises when the company providing the service have a 'set and forget' attitude to the monitoring. There are lots of areas I could talk about here but the most important one, and the one that often gets overlooked is the backups.

The backup, which is never appreciated or taken seriously unless something goes wrong, is THE most critical element of your system. It is only when something goes horribly wrong and there is NO backup that it seems to focus the mind!

many managed service providers claim to be monitoring your backup, but to what extent? and more importantly , how do you KNOW they are?

Many companies still use tape backups but I cannot tell you how many I have walked into and they could not tell me the last time someone tried to extract some data from the tape, its scary!

At The PC Surgery we have a daily backup routine which is checked against all of our clients every single day. If we do not receive a successful notification or if there is an error we have an internal SLA(Service Level Agreement) to ensure that the problem is resolved AND tested. Yes this is time consuming and yes this is a cost to us BUT if we get the phone call that all support companies hate - "Hello, our server is dead" we can relax knowing that the backups were completed and successful.

5 Tips for when your IT Support provider goes AWOL(or gets put into Administration, like Adventi)

5 Tips for when your IT Support provider goes AWOL(or gets put into Administration)

What would you do if your IT Support provider went missing in action? This is a question faced by many professional practises that were supported by Adventi, one of the UK’s fastest growing IT Consultants. Inside information suggests that clients of the firm have less than two weeks worth of support available to them due to a winding order being placed on them by HMRC. This is and should be of grave concern to practices that’s IT infrastructure and support is reliant on them.

Clients of Adventi are currently seeing the following page when trying to contact them for support through their web site:

Not much help if your email has gone down.

Alternatively, at the smaller end of the scale, your IT Support Company (a middle aged man with a screwdriver and a smart car) may currently be stranded in Marbella, grounded by Volcanic ash being spewed out by an Icelandic volcano.

It goes without saying that nowadays a professional firm, like any business, is incredibly reliant on technology and cannot afford to be in a situation where they have no one to support them. Some things, like an administration are virtually impossible to predict and any amount of Risk Assessment by your supplier would not help as the very structure which is being risk assessed has collapsed. It could definitely be argued however that an internal risk assessment of the company supporting your main services should be part of your overall contingency plan. Companies often look at the systems when conducting such a risk assessment but rarely at the suppliers themselves.

If your main IT Support does disappear it can be a very real concern especially as most firms now have some form of centralised email or practise management system. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the following tips are worth considering when taking on a new supplier or when looking to move from your existing one (who is stranded in Marbella or in discussions with HMRC)

1: Check your contract

Support contracts and Terms and Conditions are often glossed over in the world of IT. Go through them thoroughly and check what happens if key people are unavailable or if SLA’s are breached. It is also key to understand what happens if the company is bought out and if you have an option to move to a new supplier.

2: How resilient are your suppliers?

Ask them about their risk assessment, their contingency plans. If they are a small firm find out what happens if the ‘main’ techy gets stranded by a volcanic eruption in Iceland.

3: Do they have your best interests at heart?

Many IT firms are grown quickly to generate a quick return for the investors when they sell out. Do you want to be just a contract worth £XXX in resale? Big is not always best and a smaller firm with an established history will value you more, be more flexible and will be far more keen to nature you as a client. You will also be more likely to have regular direct contact with the owner and not just your account manager, who is ultimately, expendable.

4: Are they a viable business?

This may not seem obvious but it is not a bad idea to ask the business owner about the plans for the business, is it profitable, how long have they been trading for. If they are cagey then investigate further or steer clear.

5: Have a contingency plan in place

You have one for your server blowing up (if not you should!) so why not have one for your IT Supplier going into administration. Never be afraid to speak to other suppliers in the background even if you are happy with your current one. You never know what’s around the corner.

It goes without saying that as the owner of The PC Surgery I would be more than happy to discuss any concerns you may have if you have been affected by this story..0845 201 1456

Choosing a supplier should not be complicated...

We are currently looking at working with business partners in order to extend our range of products as well as giving out clients more options when using The PC Surgery as their IT Support company.

What has shocked me is how varied the quality of service is with different suppliers, and that's before we have even spent any money yet!

One backup provider who shall remain nameless but I would point out that they Backup Direct *ahem*, has been appalling. Three times I have tried to speak to someone who can run through ther product range, pricing and reseller structure with me and each time I am told that the reseller expert is on annual leave!!

Imagine calling your IT support company because your server was down only to be told that the expert is on annual leave!? Simply unacceptable.

I suppose in a way they have done me a favour in so much that I would never deal with a company that is so difficult to deal with BEFORE I had spent any money with them.

At The PC Surgery we educate all our staff about all our clients as well as all our services, so whilst the specific expert may well be on holiday, you can be rest assured that you wont have to wait for them to return before your problem is resolved.