Ask the Network Guy!

Small Businesses today are getting hit hard by the credit crunches and the speculations that are all about Wall Street and the financial markes.  Although small businesses (defined by the Small Business Administration as employing fewer than 500 employees) make up 99.9 percent of the 27.2 million businesses across the nation, banks are holding back loans and other funds needed to operate and expand.

It is these same small businesses that rely on technology to operate and to keep moving forward.  However as us small business owners are aware the cost of IT support keeps going up and up, especially the larger number of computers that you have at the office.  So the great question is what can be done to lower IT costs?

Network Virtual Support has the answer to that question.  We offer maintenance plans that allow for several aspects.  First these plans allow for you to budget your IT expenses.  Secondly by having a contract one receives a lower hourly rate by having a fixed contract.  Third, with a maintenance contract service agreements are made so that someone can help within a set amount of time.  Fourth you are receiveing services from a highly trained professional that can often times resolves issues much faster due to one’s caliber of knowledge.  Finally by having someone monitor your systems on a regular basis, they can spot and often fix things before they become a full blown outage.

How nice it is to be able to plan and budget for your IT expenses.  My clients enjoy knowing that they can budget their IT budgets, and that they will get the service that they need.  By having a support contract they have the peace of mind that their IT solutions will not break the budget, but at the same time they are receiving service when they need it, on their terms (see  maintenance plan sample below).

Everyone likes a good deal, and the maintenance plans offered through Network Virtual Support are just that, a great deal.  By electing one of the maintenance plans you are guranteed to pay less per hour for the service you receive.  Same great service, but with lower hourly rate if you go past your plan hours.  We customize a plan for your business and ensure that you are getting the best deal possible.  On average clients are saving 15 to 20 % of the cost of IT support by maintaining a maintenance plan.  Over the course of a year this can add up significantly and on average is saving my clients between $500 and $1000 a year. 

What if you could have an internal IT person on staff and ready to fix your issues as they arise, lowering your overall downtime and helping to keep productivity high; that sounds great but you cannot afford someone fulltime.  Well with the maintenace agreement that we offer, we gurantee both remote and on-site service times.  90% of most issues that my cleints have can be solved via a remore solution in under 20 minutes.  With high speed internet being as common-place and the telephone for most businesses I can offer a service guarantee that allows me to keep their computers running smoothly, thus increasing productivity and allowing your business to remain more profitable. As for the times that I am needed on-site, my maintenance agreement covers that as well.  So you don’t have to call around looking for help and getting the same answer; “I can be there in a couple of days or next week.”  I offer real-time solutions that keep your office humming.  I offer service delivery times that allow me to be on-site when you need me, not when I have a free moment.  By having a contract you are always on the top of the list when it comes to priority and service.

Furthermore you are getting high quality service and support from someone with over 25 years experience.  Someone that has worked with a variety of types of businesses and people.  From non-profit organizations with 5 to 40 employees to large corporations with over 250,000 employees I bring the lessons learned from all the places that I have worked with to provide you the highest quality service possible.  Because I have worked with so many diverse industries from medical to engineering and from Data Centers to non-profits, I know how to provide solutions that fit your needs.  My experience allows me to “know the answer,” rather that guess with the response of, “I think I know what is going on.”  My clients have told me over and over again that they love that I am well versed in hardware and software and can solve the problem quickly and completely.  Another way that I save you monies is by my ability to solve quickly.  Whereas other technicians often need 2 or more hours to resolve the issue, I can usually fix the issue in less time.  This helps maintain productivity and lowers IT cost to your business.

I am often asked what the value to a small business to having a trained professional monitoring their network and computers.  For one of my clients I was able to save them over $2000.00 in labor.  By observing how their 7 yr old server was functioning I was able to build them a new server and migrate all the Active Directory settings before their old server finally died.  I was able to due this because as a trained professional I am able to recognize the downward spiral of the server.  By moving everything I saved the company $2000.00 in labor by not having to re-create the Active Directory settings, users, accounts, etc.  By migrating when we did; we also reduced significant downtime that would have occurred had the old server died.  Oh by the way the 7 yr old server had a unrecoverable main board failure 2 days later.  So had we waited any longer the bill would have been more money, not to mention the impact to overall productivity as all the company files were on that server.  This has not been an isolated case.  Being a trained professional and having spent so many years working with computers and servers I can often spot problems before they arise and resolve them before they cause an outage.  One huge benefit of having a maintenance contract.  Monthly I look at log files, verify what patches are needed and test them before I install on client’s computers, I keep a look out for hardware issues and check the status of Raid’s sets, backups, as well as the health of AD, DNS, Firewalls, etc.

So how does this all work?  What does it cost?

The answer is that I customize you r plan to meet your specific needs.  However here is an example: