How Is Your IT Partner Motivated?

Have you ever considered how you, as a client, motivate your IT provider to support your company? Like every business, your IT partner is in business to make money. In the IT field there are a few different ways to provide support while accomplishing that goal. In our last newsletter we gave an overview of two kinds of IT companies. One that only bills hourly on a break fix basis and one that is a managed service provider (MSP).
What you are seeing behind these two business models is a difference in motivation. An hourly rate service provider is only motivated to help you when you call them because that is their opportunity to make a profit. There is no need to ensure that your network is running efficiently because the more it breaks, the more you will call them and the more profit they will make. This kind of partnership eventually leads to a vicious cycle where the client feels like they are being nickle and dimed at every turn.
On paper you will average a monthly spend for a managed service that is about the same as what you would pay for an hourly rate service. You might say “If the cost is the same, why not only pay for what I need? Some months my IT provider will be ahead and some months I will be ahead.” While this line of thought makes sense at first, you will find that the difference lies in the functionality and uptime of your network and in the productivity of your staff. If you pay for IT support and also have to compensate for the cost of downtime, you are losing money on two fronts. As a point of contrast, if you have the same monthly IT spend and your network has a 99.999% uptime rating, your keeping more of your hard earned money in the bank. The difference is that a managed service provider is motivated to keep your network running strong because they make a profit when you don’t call them for support.
There has been a change in they way that IT providers are able to support their clients. For this reason, many IT companies are changing from a break fix model to a managed service model. Over the last decade, there has been an explosion in the MSP industry and the tools that help support this industry are getting better and better. From remote management and access tools to industry specific line of business applications, we are enabled to offer better and more affordable service then could be had with the break fix model. If you are ready to discover a better way of managing your IT network through a managed service plan, give eTop Technology a call. We’re here to help!