How to Choose the Best Support Company For Your Business

If your business has five or more computers, or an expensive server, then you need access to a professional who can provide technical support. There is a huge difference between a local guy who can fix a computer and a professional who understands the intricacies of a business network—think of it like asking your pizza delivery guy to serve your entire extended family a Thanksgiving dinner.

Why Central NY Businesses Need Professional IT Support

If you are a business owner, we probably don’t have to bother telling you why you need professional IT services. You’ve likely faced enough computer headaches over the years that you already know that you can’t handle IT on your own, and you can’t always rely on calling the manufacturer yourself to get the help you need. Less obvious but more importantly, you probably don’t have the time and patience to properly set up your business network, let alone maintain it.

It’s one thing if your business only has one or two PCs that don’t need to be networked together. It’s a whole different situation when you have multiple endpoints, shared printers, one or more servers, a wireless network, a guest network, security cameras, and you manage sensitive information across some of these technologies.

Things get complicated really quick.

At that point, you can’t really rely on that quintessential “computer guy” no matter how good he or she is at what they do and how great they are at helping you over the phone. You are going to run into a situation that is beyond that person’s scope of knowledge and expertise, because your network is much more complicated than a series of computers.

Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with this type of person. Our community needs them!

Your Traditional Computer Support vs Managed IT

At Directive, we don’t really work with residential users. We’re not the place to go if you are a student and your laptop isn’t booting, or you are trying to build yourself the ultimate gaming rig, or you are thinking about running your own side hustle from your kitchen table. There are plenty of great professionals in and around Oneonta who can help with that sort of stuff, and their skill sets completely match what you would need. 

However, once that side hustle starts to expand into a full-time business, and you start adding employees and phone lines and need everyone to have access to shared folders, documents, and applications, that’s where you will need to start considering a different type of IT person.

To classify what we DO do, however, is tough to do in a small number of words. Yes, we fix computer problems on occasion, but our clients rarely have computer problems that cause any significant amount of downtime.

There are a few reasons why this is:

1. 1. We’ll handle the entire network from the ground up to be secure, efficient, and scalable. One big factor when it comes to the stability of a professional business network is that it’s designed and implemented correctly. If you just purchase a bunch of computers and network them together, you are going to have an insecure mess. The same goes if your business invests in a server and has the vendor deliver it and install it. Business technology is extremely complex and designed to be flexible for businesses of all types and sizes. One server configuration won’t work for every organization.
2. 2. We proactively monitor and maintain all of your technology behind the scenes. This includes running important security updates, patching software, and making sure your antivirus definitions are up to date. Computers actually record a lot of internalized information about their overall health and potential issues in their activity logs. This information isn’t something most users see, but we have invested in enterprise-grade tools that allow us to take all of that information and use it to solve problems before they affect your users.
3. 3. We help your business establish an IT budget and roadmap that includes upgrading hardware before it starts costing you money. We’re not expecting our clients to be frivolous and replace perfectly good computers and laptops, but we also know that you can expect to get an average of 4 to 7 years of work from a decent desktop. A laptop is a little less than that, and a server, when maintained properly, can usually last a little longer than that. We help our clients establish an anticipated budget so they can account for this, and when they can squeeze an extra year or two out of a desktop without putting their data at risk or deal with expensive downtime, it’s just added gravy.
4. 4. We dish out solutions and a quality of service you’d expect from a Fortune 500 company. I know, this sounds like I’m bragging, but it’s true. We’ve invested in extremely expensive management solutions, documentation software, remote access tools, security suites, and countless hours of training. Hiring our team to be your outsourced IT department is a lot like hiring the top 1% of the best IT candidates when it comes to the skills and capabilities we give our staff. The difference is we can provide these services for dozens and dozens of local businesses and split the costs of all of the investment that went into it. 
5. 5. Everything we do starts with security. In our experience, nobody thinks about IT security. Not to sound negative, but even the smartest, most successful business owners we know tend to take major shortcuts that put their own business at risk. We think about security constantly so you can focus on doing what you do best. We can help your business meet compliance requirements, train your staff to prevent phishing attacks, and make sure your users only have access to the information they need on your network.

All of this basically sets us apart from other computer support businesses in the area, and classifies Directive as a managed IT provider.

Do You Find Value in Your Technology and Data?

This is the big dividing line between whether or not your company just needs a traditional computer repair company, or if you need managed IT services. If you could continue to operate without access to your computers for a few days and not really feel any repercussions, then you probably just need someone to come in and fix problems when they can. If you can calculate actual loss of time and productivity from a network outage or computer malfunction, then managed IT services are a much better option because it centers around the idea that computer issues tap into your profits and thus should be prevented.

We’re Oneonta’s Most Trusted IT Services Company

Learn why some of the sharpest business owners in town rely on us to keep their technology running. We don’t believe in pushy sales tactics or aggressive cold-calling—but we’d love to talk to you and discuss how we can help your business take its IT to the next level. Give us a call today at 607.433.2200.