What is the difference of having a PC repair man versus partnering with a managed service provider? As a Managed Services provider, a lot customers have approached us with this same question. We thought we’d provide some insight into this excellent question and help people understand what the differences are between a one man PC repair person and a managed service provider.
Reactive vs. Proactive
Organizations today need to operate like well oiled machines.There’s no time for technical issues to arise during high peak operational hours. Insert here Joe the PC repair person. The owner of a small business has a PC repair individual who comes on a break-fix basis. When a business contacts The PC expert, the individual will determine when he can come in and resolve the issue. May take a day or two, perhaps even longer. Joe the PC repair man comes in and takes between 2-3 hours trying to resolve the issue and sometimes needs to come back another day because of other scheduled appointments. We have seen this type of behavior often and no one wins in this scenario.
Contracting with a managed service provider can prevent issues from arising before the customer even sees a technical issue. For instance, the managed services provider will have monitoring software installed on the customer’s network to monitor health and status activity. If any issues arise, the provider is able to resolve the issue prior to the customers knowledge and most importantly, never interrupting the business’ workflow. A client needs to partner with an experienced managed service provider that understands the key to business success.
Break Fix Support vs. Dedicated Support
The term break/fix support has been around for some time for IT professionals. A piece of equipment is working one day, and then the next day the device breaks. A lot of one man PC repair shops operate in this fashion. Is this an efficient method for businesses? The answer is it depends. If you are a business that needs computers, printers, and servers to operate on a daily basis, having equipment break can cost the company money. A one man PC repair individual can come in fix the issue and leave. A couple days later another piece of valuable equipment breaks, the cycle continues. Instead of having one individual come in and resolve the issues when something breaks, why not have dedicated support to resolve annoyances prior to a bigger issue arising?
The benefit of an IT support team has numerous advantages. As mentioned above in reactive vs proactive, being proactive is key to success. With a dedicated team, a customer can know that IT professionals with years of experience are monitoring a customer’s system, making sure all equipment is performing at the optimal level. The dedicated time will have numerous types of expertise ranging from System Administrators all the way to onsite technicians. The benefit of having a dedicated team can help businesses maintain uninterrupted workflow while knowing there is always individuals maintaining the business’ entire computer infrastructure.
Computer & Industry Knowledge
In a time when computers have become as essential as food and water, the importance of maintaining a company’s entire infrastructure is a high priority. Today a lot of computer repair shops have the basic knowledge to resolve “everyday” break-fix issues. Do they have the knowledge of a managed service provider? As mentioned above, when a business partners with a service provider they are partnering with experts in the IT industry that range from System Administrators to experienced field technicians. The knowledge maintained in the company is critical as employees are constantly keeping up with the latest trends in the IT industry and what new threats are coming out to capture sensitive customer data. The employees are trained in-house and the customer never has to pay for training, which is sometimes required when companies hire in-house IT support. The message here is providers, like us, are constantly keeping up to date with industry trends to allow us to better assist customers in the short and long term.
Article from Technibble
https://www.technibble.com/forums/threads/break-fix-vs-msp.73391/