Coleman Technologies Blog

The entire premise of managed IT services is that they can save your business money, but in what specific ways does working with us make your budget more predictable? It’s really quite simple, and it encompasses three primary pillars: an established level of service, proactive maintenance and management, and the reliability and access to expertise that might otherwise put a stopper on your business’ potential.

We’ll be examining these specific ways that working with a managed service provider allows you to factor in clear expectations for IT services month-to-month.

The Service Level Agreement (SLA)

When you work with a good managed service provider like Coleman Technologies, you are generally entering into what is called a service level agreement. This service level agreement consists of the various products, services, and support you can expect from your provider month-to-month. You pay a convenient and easily budgetable amount for services rendered. It doesn’t get much easier than this. With technology being such a volatile and unpredictable factor for many businesses, the steadiness offered by an MSP is a breath of fresh air.

The Power of Proactive

One of the worst things that can happen to any business is a hardware failure. Not only do you have to replace the technology that breaks down, but you have to eat the costs associated with downtime, too. No one likes paying people for time when they aren’t getting anything of value done. While it might seem like hardware failure comes out of the blue, this is far from the truth. In most cases, technology issues like these can be predicted, which is exactly what a managed service provider does with proactive monitoring and maintenance. With the right tools and expertise, you can address potential IT issues before they cause downtime.

Reliable and Affordable Access to Expertise

If you have the good fortune of employing an IT technician in-house, then chances are you are all too familiar with the struggles of finding qualified talent. Instead of gambling on the local talent pool, you can instead get all of the IT expertise you need through a managed service provider and their network of skilled and trusted professionals. It’s a great way to get value out of your investment without adding an extra salary or two to your budget.

Make Your IT Spending More Predictable with Managed Services

Are you sick of not knowing how much capital you need to commit to your technology month-to-month? If so, Coleman Technologies is happy to help you streamline your spending with managed IT services. We’ll work with you to create an agreement that addresses all of your major technology management pain points. To learn more, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

IT support is a must for the modern business. Whether you have an internal IT administrator, a team of technicians on staff, or you outsource your management, you need to ensure that your business has the support and service needed to keep your business’ technology running efficiently. 

The technology that organizations use for business hasn’t really changed much over the past few decades unless you count the emerging technologies that some organizations have rolled out recently such as AI tools and dynamic IoT technologies. In this week’s blog, we will go over how organizations have shifted their IT support structure to get more value for their business.

A Little Background

For decades businesses that depended on technology had three options: They could hire technology professionals to help deploy tools and manage the organization’s technology; they could wait until their technology breaks and get it fixed by an outside break/fix vendor; or they could just have their regular employees troubleshoot problems as they arise. Let’s go through each option to see why demand has grown for affordable outsourced IT support.

Hiring Internal IT Professionals

This option is still used by a lot of organizations. Frankly, if your organization can afford it, it is never a bad idea to have an internal IT professional at the ready to help you fix problems, create strategy, and onboard new tools. But, there's the rub: can you afford it? The average IT technician makes over $50,000 per year, with some with years of useful experience getting paid 50-to-100 percent more than that. It can be a major expense to hire new IT talent and even then you only have one person handling all the technology issues. It can be a bit much.

Waiting for Technology to Break

This was the preferred method for many organizations for years. Basically, technology will work great for a while, then it will break. It isn’t much different today. Once there was a broken computer/printer/router etc., you would take it to a break/fix vendor and then get it back in the rotation after a few days away. This seems reasonable, until you take into consideration the money you aren’t making as you wait to get your technology back. Downtime can cost any business a lot of money, and do so very rapidly. By waiting to get your technology back, you are basically succumbing to the downtime your company has to deal with. No good.

Employee Troubleshooting

Probably the riskiest strategy of them all is to allow your staff to troubleshoot problems on their own. This not only will surely cause a lot of downtime, but it will likely have lasting impacts on your business’ ability to effectively do the things it needs to do to generate revenue. This subset of businesses is the most likely to have devastating technology issues bring down their whole company. 

A Better Strategy

For the past decade many businesses have taken advantage of a better strategy: Managed IT services. This service effectively replaces your IT management strategy with a team of technicians that work remotely to manage your business’ IT with state-of-the-art monitoring and management software. The benefit of this is to have your technology constantly monitored for threats and underperformance so that technicians can fix issues with these systems before they can become profit-sapping problems. 

This form of proactive IT management is only one of the numerous beneficial services that come with a comprehensive managed IT services contract. Some of the other features include:

• Expert technicians - You know those technicians making $80-to-$100K per year because of their field experience? Those are the level of technicians that typically run proactive services at managed IT service providers. You will get to work with a team of technicians and consultants that know how technology fits into your business, and what needs to happen to get it to that point. 
• Budgetable monthly payment - With Managed IT, you know exactly how much your technology support costs are beforehand. 
• Vendor management - You may be surprised just how much time away from your business your vendors cause you to take. Knowledgeable consultants can manage your IT vendor relationships for you to ensure that you have a professional perspective working for your business.
• Backup and Disaster Recovery - The BDR service backs up your company’s crucial data and applications to ensure that if something goes wrong, you have an up-to-date backup of the data you need to keep your business running.
• Hardware support - If something goes wrong and our technicians can’t fix it remotely, we will come onsite to ensure that your hardware is fixed and you can get back to business fast. 

The whole point is that managed services providers do things remotely and proactively so that you don’t have to see massive maintenance costs. If you would like to learn more about getting your business the technology support and management it needs, give Coleman Technologies a call at (604) 513-9428.

Why Managed IT Services

COVID-19 has managed to close wide swaths of businesses and organizations as people try to stem its spread by avoiding as much contact with others as possible. Any small business owner would understandably be hesitant to make any large shifts in their operations, but it also needs to be understood that the shift to managed services can help relieve many of the challenges that businesses are currently facing—as well as those that may pop up afterwards.

Businesses Can’t Operate if Their Employees Aren’t There

While many businesses truly need to have their employees physically present to function, there are a great many that feasibly could operate on a primarily remote basis, provided they had the right tools. This approach would work well for those who are labelled essential right now, as it could help minimize the number of people present at the workplace and drastically improve social distancing efforts.

By working with a managed service provider, businesses have a resource to help them reach the safest working conditions for their teams. Any personnel who don’t explicitly need to be onsite could be provided the means to remote in, with these solutions managed by the provider for maximum uptime.

Proper Support Services Introduce Additional Risks

That leads us into the next benefit that managed services offer: the support that a managed service provider delivers is primarily using remote monitoring and management tools. This means that if an issue should arise for one of your remote team members, there is a very good chance it can be resolved without either your users or the technician even getting up from their seat.

Managed services will even help you avoid these kinds of issues in the first place with the same remote capabilities. By proactively monitoring for threats and other problems, your provider can spot many of them before they realize, taking the steps to prevent your employees from having any difficulties. As an MSP, Coleman Technologies does this kind of thing every day, and while we can’t catch everything, you can be sure that we will catch the vast majority.

Support Services are Expensive, Especially Now

You may be thinking: so, you’re proposing that I make another investment into managed services when my business is clearly going to experience some tough times?

In some ways, yes, but in the given context, consider it more of insurance instead of an investment.

Let’s say you continue to use the same IT services that you always have, essentially paying per incident to keep your business operational. Doing so gives you no consistency, and therefore is impossible to predict and budget for with any accuracy.

Managed services take a different approach: extensive coverage under an all-encompassing subscription fee. Out of fairness, we should mention that there may be an occasional out-of-scope need, potentially creating the need to adjust these fees slightly. Accepting this relatively rare circumstance, working with an MSP allows a business to accurately budget for their information technology services.

There are many more reasons that a business should strongly consider the services of a managed service provider, especially in these challenging and disconcerting times. If you have any more questions to ask, we are here for you. Reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

What’s the Big Deal?
You would think that assigning administrator accounts would prevent users from making poor choices with your data. The main difference between the two is that administrator accounts have many more privileges compared to the traditional account used by the average user. In fact, a traditional account is much safer to use unless you actually need administrator access to perform a certain task. Ordinarily, a normal user account can’t install software or mess around with important files in the system, but this isn’t necessarily the case for an administrator account.

Admin accounts are essentially the most powerful account on your computer. They have the permissions to perform just about any role on your PC. It’s the same role that your IT department uses to make any significant changes to your devices during updates and general maintenance. Every computer needs to have at least one admin account found on it, but if access from untrained users is allowed, they could make changes to important files needed for the computer to run properly.

Why You Should Limit Admin Account Use
While it might make sense to have admin permissions if you’re the only one who uses your computer, this is simply not the case on a managed network. There are security problems associated with using an admin account as your primary device account. What happens if your account gets compromised by some sort of malware? It’s simple; the malware will install on your admin account and be able to make any changes it wants to any of the important files only accessible by your admin account. While more permissions as the device owner might sound ideal, it only makes it easier for threats to leave a lasting effect on a device.

Standard accounts have more limited permissions, meaning that if they are compromised in any fashion, they will be more limited in the amount of damage they can cause. It’s for this reason that it’s best to limit administrator accounts as often as possible, as there is no guarantee you will never fall victim to such attacks.

To minimize the chance of your business’ endpoints falling prey to attacks, you should implement proactive measures against the countless possibilities out there--including a compromised admin account. To learn more about how your business can protect itself, reach out to us at (604) 513-9428.

Not anymore.
A concept called managed IT services has taken the business world by storm. Experienced technicians work diligently with some of today’s most powerful monitoring software to proactively manage a business’ network and infrastructure, keeping technology working better longer, and reducing downtime to a point where it isn’t the huge problem it traditionally has been.

Coleman Technologies is a proud managed IT services vendor. With our technicians’ expertise, we are able to offer our clients a massive cache of services that include:

• Remote and onsite support
• Around-the-clock monitoring
• Help desk
• Server, workstation, and mobile device support
• Networking support
• Software patch management
• Stronger cyber and network security
• Data backup and recovery
• Professional technology consulting
• Periodic business reviews
• Vendor management
• And more

It is increasingly rare for many small or medium-sized businesses to hire onsite IT staff. If you don’t have the support your technology needs to function properly, you are looking at variable capital expenses that can, and likely will come to pass at exactly the wrong moment.

Coleman Technologies’s IT services provide your business with access to dedicated and knowledgeable IT technicians that are well positioned with some of the most powerful technology management software on the market; and, does it for a predictable monthly rate.

If you would like to get rid of your IT headaches for good, and kick downtime to the curb, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.

Managed IT Services

For the small or medium-sized business seeking maximum value for their dollar, managed IT is a great choice. For a predictable, scaled monthly fee, a managed service provider (also known as an MSP) will make sure that a company’s information technology solutions are functional before a problem or issue arises. What’s more, a relationship with an MSP can also provide invaluable access to specialized vendors, enabling you to leverage some of the best solutions available.

As alluded to above, one of the biggest values that an MSP provides is in the hands-on experience that its technicians have, both on-site and remotely. A company whose solutions aren’t in working order is a company that is hemorrhaging money via downtime, and so it is crucial that a company in this situation has the means to resolve and ideally avoid downtime, continuing its productivity and revenue generation.

One of the biggest benefits to investing in managed IT services is the speed at which you will see a return on that investment. Comparing the cost of an MSP’s services to the multitude of costs that these services help you avoid will help to illustrate how much an MSP can help you. How much are you spending on break/fix services, hiring and onboarding an in-house technician, updating and upgrading your hardware and software, and weathering downtime? All of these costs can be consolidated and/or eliminated with an agreement with an MSP.

Hybrid Cloud

The cloud is growing at an explosive pace, and for the business or organization with specific needs where accessibility and security are concerned, a hybrid cloud platform may be the best strategy to leverage this industry-shaking technology. Private clouds, while secure, are costly to implement and maintain. Public clouds are more affordable, but there are some major concerns among businesses at the thought of blindly entrusting crucial data to another organization. While the security of such methods is improving, there is an understandable need for control among many business owners that disqualifies the public cloud as a viable option.

The hybrid cloud is the integration of these two halves, joined together to eliminate the downsides while preserving the advantages. This also provides control over a business’ data and applications while allowing the scalability to leverage it as needed. Arguably best of all, the hybrid cloud can add the productivity that your business needs to increase revenue and profits. These reasons are large contributors to why the hybrid cloud is swiftly being considered an inevitability for all businesses by many industry experts.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)

Nowadays, just about every business has a wireless network. This has led, in conjunction with every employee coming to work with a smartphone in their pocket, to a need to manage the devices that connect to that network. Allowing employees to utilize their personal devices for work purposes brings great benefits, but requires a solution to help eliminate the risks and threats that these devices bring in from the outside. There is also no shortage of incidents where inappropriate and shortsighted mobile behaviors on a wireless network have brought issues to a business. This is why you need to take the necessary steps to protect your network through the enforcement of BYOD policies.

A BYOD policy needs to take many things into account to be seen as having a worthwhile value to the organization, from how many devices are being brought into the company to the cost of the mobile device management software to the affect that introducing these devices into the workflow has on productivity and collaboration.

Of course, you should also keep in mind that some employees and most of the visitors you receive to the office will see no problem in using your business network to access things that aren’t conducive to your business operations, eating up resources that should be used for other things. This is why any BYOD implementation also needs to see to including access control and permissions within its mobile device management policies. This will provide you with benefits from heightened efficiency to enhanced security, leading to a potential boost in revenue generation - all the while enjoying the diminished costs that leveraging BYOD provides to your business’ budget.

It’s true that adding new technology solutions to your business can carry a hefty expense with it, but the right solutions can offset that cost with improved company operations and diminished security risks. The professionals at Coleman Technologies have the experience and know-how with IT solutions to ensure that the right solutions are the ones that go into your business, in the right way. For more information about some of the things we can help you to improve in your organization’s IT, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

MSP Support

The Managed Service Provider (MSP) provide an experience unlike traditional service providers’ methodology. Let’s take a look at two scenarios:

Tom is emailing his boss in regard to a company project when all of a sudden his software closes. Tom tries to re-open his email, resulting in well, no result. Tom, frustrated at his email software, spam clicks the application which causes his entire computer to freeze. He has to ask his neighbor to contact their IT department for him. Unfortunately, they are out for lunch which results in a massive amount of downtime for not only Tom but for the business itself. 

Jerry, who works for a business on the other side of town, is working on a project when he too is experiencing technical difficulties. Jerry has been working on a new business logo in his graphic design software. While opening his file, he is prompted with a message informing him that his software license is not valid. Jerry wastes no time in creating a ticket with his managed service provider. Within minutes, a technician remotes into Jerry’s computer, reconciling the issue at hand. Jerry is up and working in a timely manner. 

Time is money, so why not save yourself time with managed services? 

Onsite Support Services

Managed service providers leverage remote support simply because of how efficient it is. It doesn’t make sense for a technician to come all the way out to your business to resolve an issue that could have been resolved at their own office. However, when a situation occurs where a technician is actually required to be present, managed service providers have trained staff ready to be dispatched. 

When something goes wrong, IT support needs to be present. It isn’t cost effective to have IT support present when your infrastructure is operating as it should.

Keep Business Moving Forward

Time is a business’ most scarce resource, so why waste any of it? Every moment is valuable, so you can’t afford to sit idle waiting for IT to return back from lunch or wait for them to have a free moment. To ensure you get the most out of every second, Coleman Technologies offers managed services which can greatly benefit your business.

This is far from the end when discussing the benefits of managed services. Return back to our blog page to read part three of this series. If you would like to discuss additional support options offered with managed IT services, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

As we have done throughout this series, we will compare the experience that a managed service provider is able to deliver, compared to the alternative.

Cloud Services

Brennan’s business gathers and stores a substantial amount of data, as most businesses do. His business relies heavily on this data, as he runs an organization which depends on client contacts. To store all of this data, Brennan decides to do some research and build his own server. He understands the basics, and begins work. Not only does this take up a large amount of space, it also requires an absurd amount of power to operate. This makes the office unbearably hot. Furthermore, Brennan hooks up connections incorrectly causing equipment failure. This is not covered under warranty, and the initial cost of setting up a server is astronomical. 

On the other side of the town, Dale works in the music industry. His business decides to go with managed services. Dale is quickly connected with a trustworthy, dependable cloud service. He is then able to store all of his data and applications in the space provided by this service. It only costs a minimal monthly fee in comparison to the initial cost a server build would require. 

Backup and Disaster Recovery

Let’s assume both Brennan and Dale are given the same set of circumstances. A flood causes both businesses to be completely under water. How differently will these two business owners handle this disaster?

Brennan, panic stricken, attempts to grab whatever equipment he can salvage. His business relies entirely on the information stored within his computers. He is only able to get a small number of computers operating again, and since all of his data was in-house, nearly all of it is destroyed. Brennan’s business is in some truly dire straits. 

Dale immediately begins his backup and disaster recovery plan. His plan has been tested recently, so he is confident that his entire business can operate off-site. All of his data is stored in the cloud, which means it is all accessible anywhere there is internet. Dale’s cloud service also goes the additional mile of storing his data in an additional place. This ensures that there truly is a backup, and the same disaster that causes a backup plan to be utilized does not destroy the backup data. 

Data Warehousing

The process of combining seeming less unrelated data into a singular platform is data warehousing. This process helps businesses fuel their analytics as well as their business intelligence platforms. These platforms are turning into some of the most important tools a business owner can utilize, as they provide immense value by providing decision makers a thorough knowledge base.

This processing requires a bit of computing power. In fact, it requires more computing power than Brennan’s entire home-made system is able to muster up. Since Dale utilizes managed services, he has no issues accomplishing his goals. His provider’s flexibility ensures he is able to adjust his infrastructure as needed. 

Managed IT Value - Up Next 

In the next part of our series, we will be discussing how a managed service provider can assist with IT procurement. Coleman Technologies is always available to answer any questions you may have, so give us a call at (604) 513-9428 today!

With organizations running on technology, it is important that it is reliably managed. It’s also important that your organization has the technology in place that will help your team be the most productive and that will keep your data secure. The best way to accomplish this is with help from certified and knowledgeable IT technicians. 

Understanding of Business Technology

There are people who know technology, and then there are those that work with it day in and day out. You can’t operate a business without having the right technology in place, complete with those who help to keep it in proper working order. Your IT technicians should be knowledgeable about how to set up and configure computer systems, troubleshoot hardware and software, and secure a network from both internal and external threats. With this expertise, your IT technicians should be fully capable of managing and maintaining small business technology with minimal incident.

Keeping an Eye Out for Potential Issues

Certified IT technicians can work to proactively monitor your systems for a variety of issues that could lead to more frustrating problems. The idea behind proactive monitoring is that these issues can be addressed before they become worse, allowing organizations to dodge the expensive frustrating downtime and data loss that comes from a halt in operations.

Responding as Quickly as Possible (and Necessary)

If you experience technology problems during the course of everyday operations, time is of the essence. You need technicians who can respond quickly and appropriately to minimize the amount of time and money lost during the downtime. With the right combination of expertise and knowledge, a certified IT technician can get your business back in proper running order as soon as possible.

Improving Data Security

Data security is an issue that plagues all businesses, especially small businesses that don’t have the same access to enterprise-grade security tools and solutions as larger organizations do. They also struggle to take advantage of the same level of IT security expertise due to limited budgets. Thankfully, certified IT technicians and managed service providers offer small businesses the same opportunities offered to larger companies, from security solution configuration to remote backups to ensure data security and integrity on all levels.

Scaling According to Need

Small businesses can grow rapidly, and so too do their technology needs and expectations. A certified IT technician can help SMBs adapt to their constantly changing technology needs to ensure it aligns with their goals every step of the way. This involves planning for future growth, too, and ensuring that changing technological requirements do not get in the way of further innovation.

Coleman Technologies can give your business access to the certified IT technicians it needs to be successful. To learn more, call us today at (604) 513-9428.

IT Management Matters More Than Ever

From a certain point of view, businesses now find themselves in a unique position to restructure their operations. For instance, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an inconvenient case study of sorts that shows a promising outlook on remote productivity.

It has also helped to shine the light on how impactful waste can be in poorly managed IT strategies. Without any engaged oversight, the heightened use of cloud services can lead to a few considerable issues, including

• Unused accounts and services
• Duplicate accounts for services
• Services still earmarked for a former employee
• Misconfigured services

These issues can ultimately account for 30 percent of an organization’s IT investment spend and can be resolved with remarkably little effort. The problem is that someone has to know to catch it—and if these things were set up by somebody who has since left, or worked for a break-fix provider, that person may not be available.

So, it only makes sense that businesses would want to take account of these costs, and shore them in.

Of course, we have to talk about the economy. With the economy in the state that it is in, businesses are going to have to batten down the hatches. In addition to consolidating budgets and managing them better, businesses need to know that they have the solutions necessary to survive going forward.

This will require modern solutions that allow for remote productivity and collaboration to take place. A modern IT provider, like Coleman Technologies, can provide for all these needs.

How Our Services Can Help

As a managed service provider, we work in the background of your organization, remotely keeping an eye on the technology your team is relying on to do their jobs. In doing so, we can spot potential wastes of time and money—including the ones listed above, by the way—and resolve them before you ever find out about it. This way, your workday can carry on without the added stress that technology issues bring.

To learn more about our services, give us a call at (604) 513-9428.

Businesses Depend on IT

There are a lot of different pieces of technology that go into a business, and like a puzzle they all need to fit together and work. So where do all of these puzzle pieces come from? Let’s examine different types of technology.

Servers and Networking

Here are two scenarios, and the different methods businesses use to handle them:

Walter’s business is growing extremely quickly, but his servers are the same ones he’s been using for years. He realizes he is running low on storage space, and his increasing staff puts pressure on him to upgrade his server. Walter manages to cobb something together, hoping it will suffice for the time being. When Walter attempts to merge his servers into one slightly larger server, he misconfigured a few components resulting in downtime for his entire staff. Not only has he wasted his own time, but now he is experiencing the most expensive segment of downtime he has ever experienced. 

Jesse, on the other side of town, also is experiencing extraordinary growth. Jesse however, makes a simple phone call to his managed service provider. He is connected to a professional, who advises Jesse on server options that will sufficiently support his growing business. His managed service provider not only points him in the right direction, but also comes on site to install this new technology. Jesse knows he isn’t a tech know-it-all, so he leaves deployment of servers to the professionals. His business is ready for increased data storage that same week he decided it was time to expand. 

Workstations

Your business’ employees are only capable of what their technology can handle. When it comes time to upgrade or add additional workstations, there are a few options one can take. Let’s see how our two business owners handle these situations.

Walter, who is an impulse spur of the moment shopper, sees what he believes is a fantastic deal on eBay. He decides that these second-hand computers will be able to handle all of his employee’s programs without issue. However, upon arrival Walter notices that his computers are missing a few components. It turns out that the eBay listing was actually for five home-made computers that the builder was never able to get to operate properly, rather than complete working PCs. Overlooking the description just set him back a large amount of money, and the computer repair shop charges nearly as much as a brand new PC would have. 

Jesse, has a few empty desks he would like to fill with capable computers as well as a few new employees. He reaches out to his managed service provider to discuss which computer might fit the needs of his business. The professionals are able to use their connections to get Jesse a fantastic deal, and most importantly, the purchase of the computers comes with free installation.

Software as a Service

What good would a computer be without the necessary software? Businesses should be utilizing the latest and greatest software. There are a few different approaches a business owner can take to procure the necessary software to boost productivity within the office.

Walter knows that software can be expensive, so he decides to torrent a few versions hoping that he doesn’t get caught. Unfortunately, however, Walter is exposed as a fraud and his business is the center of attention for all things media. His business suffers massively, and he wishes he had spent a fortune on the software instead. 

Jesse too knows how expensive software can be. Unlike Walter, he once again leans on his managed service provider. They offer what is known as software-as-a-service. This service gives you all the latest and greatest software, for a low monthly cost. It’s like renting a tool, as opposed to buying it outright. Not only does this tool come with free installation as well as support, but it doesn’t set Jesse back a large sum of money. He is able to give his employees all of the programs they need to proficiently do their jobs. 

Which Experience Sounds More Enjoyable?

If you had a choice to be Jesse or Walter, which would you choose? Managed services truly offer support for all of your business needs. If you would like to learn more, reach out to our professionals by calling Coleman Technologies at (604) 513-9428 today!

A Proactive Approach 

Which scenario which would you prefer to be in:

You take your car to a shop for a tune up. A technician calls to inform you that your engine has hardly any oil in it due to a leak. However, he replaces a gasket and tops your oil off. The simple fix has cost just $80. 

OR

You notice your car is leaving dark black stains in your driveway, but after a quick google search determine that your car is probably fine, and the money you could be spending on a tune up could be better spent on an iPhone. Once all the oil is gone, your motor has completely seized due to the lack of lubrication, and you have to use your brand new iPhone to call a repair shop. The new motor will set you back $3,000. 

Your answer to the question should be obvious, but how can you take the same proactive approach with IT? The strategy most businesses choose is one that has proven its worth -- managed IT services. 

What are Managed IT Services? 

Managed IT services monitor systems through the use of remote monitoring. This strategy is extremely beneficial as an IT staff does not need to be on-site at all times. By using state-of-the-art tools, managed IT providers are able to monitor your business' network and hardware, ensuring they are operating correctly. If it is not working correctly, a technician is typically able to resolve the issue remotely. This, of course, means you might not even be aware of a potential issue--and most of the time--it will be resolved before you know it. 

Having a fix-it-when-it-breaks attitude has no place in any business. The value that managed IT services delivers cannot be matched. The only comparable proactive solution is having an on-site IT staff working around the clock. How much do you think that would cost you?

Imagine paying staff to sit around waiting for something to break. Now imagine paying the non-IT staff to sit around, while your IT staff tries to resolve the issue. The biggest cost a business faces with malfunctioning hardware is typically the downtime that results from it. 

Avoid Expensive Downtime

Coleman Technologies provides simple yet effective means which act before little issues turn into operational catastrophes. One solution we offer is a comprehensive patch management service. Not updating software leaves your business susceptible to data breaches. A data breach could put not only all of your data at risk, it could jeopardize your entire business. 

To learn how easily you can adopt proactive measures into your business, give us a call at (604) 513-9428. Be sure to check for part two of this series on Friday.