Have you got the right support model, and does it work for you? - By: ColinWBrown

After a recent seminar mixing in with other IT support companies, it got me thinking on how each of us does things slightly differently. It came as quite a surprise to me the amount of IT support companies who still follow that method of re-active support where if they wait until something is broken before they fix it. I’m sure you’re sitting thinking that seems fairly sensible as you can’t exactly fix something before it’s broken, but you can more often than not see the signs.

In years gone by, the Re-Active support model was the way many if not all IT support companies worked. Now there seems to be 3 distinct models, and it’s worth noting which model your support company fall’s into. There is the Re-Active which has previously been mentioned, or 2 different forms of pro-active. Pro-active IT support involves putting some form of monitoring software on the server and or the PC’s and any alerts which are generated are reported back to a console to be dealt with. Here’s where the split comes in, in that does anyone actually deal with this? More and more IT support companies are offering this Pro-Active model, however there is no real process put in place to actually deal with the issue.

One issue which came to the fore was backups, which is critical in the event of any failure. Several of the IT Support companies advised if a client’s backup failed, they would drop an email to the client, get them to check if a tape was in and close the case. The theory being, the client knows, it’s their problem. However, this is just storing up a potential issue for your client, which the support company is going to have to deal with in the event of a failure, as I can’t imagine one email advising to change the tape is going to cut much ice when the IT support company have to explain that the backup has failed several days in a row and no-one has bothered to check it. On a side note utilising Cloud Backup UK would always alleviate this.

This brings me back to processes, and how I found we were doing things that bit different. The monitoring software is checked every morning as a priority by a member of the Helpdesk team for any issue’s found through any of the clients. Any issue’s found are then booked in as a matter of priority dependant on their type and level of severity and assigned to an engineer. Backup problems are one category dealt with early so if troubleshooting needs to be done, we can make sure there is plenty time to resolve issue’s with tapes/drives/external hard-disks etc and be sure that a backup will complete successfully that night.

So with Pro-Active monitoring in use, and processes in place to make sure it works for us as the IT support Glasgow company and you as the client, the benefits are reaped by everyone. Seeing those errors on the Finance Directors PC that the hard-drive is failing means we can deal with the issue better. We can track down the bespoke software that only he uses that need’s setup by another party and get this all ready and in place so the switchover is smooth and pain free, rather than waiting on the hard-drive going pop and rushing around to try and find everything so the wages can be done by 4pm that day.

Pro-Active monitoring mean’s moving with the times and a cultural change to IT Support. The ones who utilise it properly and have the processes to back it up do probably miss the adulation of having a user endlessly thank you for “getting all my stuff back after my PC died”, but the satisfaction of stopping things from getting to that stage in the first place can be so much better. With the grief and stress that both parties end up under by letting it get to that stage now going, then surely that’s better for everyone.

We have been linked in with monitoring software for a period of almost 5 years now and for that reason our clients are reaping the benefits. Can you say the same about your current IT Support company, if not, why not get in touch?

About the Author

http://www.certum.co.uk

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