For a fun little exercise, imagine you’ve just signed up for our managed IT services. Everything’s well and good, but then, something goes wrong with your computer. What gives? Aren’t we supposed to prevent issues from occurring in the first place? It’s easy to get discouraged when freak situations like this occur, but it’s important to highlight what proactive IT solutions can do, and more importantly, what they can’t do.

In truth, proactive IT services aren’t necessarily about eliminating issues and errors in their entirety (although that would be nice). Rather, it’s about doing everything you can to avoid situations like the one above and having a strategy in place to address it when it can’t be avoided.

Managed IT is Like an Iceberg

Despite this being a rather tired metaphor, it’s the one that best illustrates the value attained by managed IT services. With an iceberg, you only see the tip, with the bulk of the ice mass being hidden underwater. It works like this with IT services, too.

In the context of IT, you might see our communication through your support tickets, but behind the scenes, we’re also…

• Patching your software after hours so your team members can get through their day without our butting in
• Keeping an eye on every device attached to your network to watch out for signs of wear and tear or cyberthreats
• Handling your vendors on your behalf so you can focus on your everyday goals
• Protecting your business by maintaining the defenses that keep threats out
• Planning what needs to be updated and upgraded in the future

In other words, the value is not always obvious or clear, and the true benefits of working with us come from what we do under the hood rather than out in the open.

Things Break From Time to Time

Despite our efforts, we aren’t fortune tellers. We can’t look into our crystal ball and see every little misfortune that will befall your business. But we can proactively monitor your infrastructure and handle issues that are within our capacity to address.

For example, if Microsoft has an outage, there’s nothing we can do about that outside of having a plan to help you maintain operations, even during the outage. And don’t forget that hardware can’t last forever, either. Being proactive means we know when your hardware’s time has come, and we can prepare for these situations accordingly.

What About the Alternative?

If we look at the reactive IT provider’s services, you’ll see what the costs look like compared to our own proactive services.

To break it down, you get an outsourced IT department of professionals maintaining your business technology solutions and handling all of the issues that could possibly come up. This allows you to achieve minimal downtime while keeping your team as productive as possible. But if you go the other route, you wait and deal with problems as they pop up, leaving you stuck with costly downtime and astronomical costs.

While managed services are not foolproof, they are absolutely the better choice for a business that wants to be cost-effective and competitive.

We’ll Address Your Technology Needs from Backstage

You can think of COMPANYNAME as the stage crew of a good stage play. We’re in the back, making sure the show goes off without a hitch, all the while doing it from behind the curtains so the audience (your customers) can enjoy the production.

Our goal is to keep your technology working, which might sound boring, but it’s the best way to describe what we do. We are supposed to be invisible; even if you can’t see us all the time, we’re always there, doing what must be done to keep your business running.

If this kind of technology management is what your business needs (and it is), contact First Column IT today at (571) 470-5594.

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