Why the Break-Fix Technology Relationship is Broken

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I’m not sure if you know this, but when Entech first started, we were operating at of our founder’s mother’s garage. Martin Haas had a vision regarding technology and he wanted to help residents and small business owners make the most of their equipment. The business started slowly, fixing the computers of many different clients. It wasn’t until 2008 that we really started to hone in on things. We discovered that the break-fix model that every other technology provider was utilizing was, well, broken. We could spend hours on site at the client’s business, but things would still break – we didn’t have the control over their system to ensure that everything was set up properly from the get go. And even when we were the ones that set it up, we weren’t actively managing it with anti-virus and ensuring hardware, software and strategy were up to speed. It was truly a reactive approach. Our clients got large bills and we were sending techs on the road all the time. It wasn’t a mutually beneficial relationship.

No cost control.
Cruising along on your technology avoiding a monthly fee sounds good, since you avoided having that recurring expense – but what happens when things break? You get an invoice. And because you’re putting a bandaid on the system by bringing in a technician that may not be familiar with the rest of how your system works – you risk something else breaking. What happens when that happens? Invoices, invoices and more invoices. A simple issue can snowball and cost thousands of dollars.

No strategy.
With technology and business growth, you need to be strategic. You need customized workflows and processes, technology that communicates, and seamless efficiency. You need to lay the foundation and build upon that foundation for successful technology. If your network infrastructure is configured improperly from the get go, you’ll continue to see issues with a piece of equipment or the network itself. A new technician or company just coming in will need to perform a comprehensive evaluation and the resulting fix could be in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

No relationship.
What happens when the invoices are pouring in? You question the expertise and you look for the lowest bidder. But we all know that you get what you pay for. The technician of the lowest bidding company will not have the expertise needed to get past the bandaid phase and really ensure that your network and technology are all working together. What happens here? More vendor juggling, more invoices and a spiral into an extremely expensive problem that could have been resolved with a simple Managed Services agreement.

Think you’re not ready for the investment surrounding managed services? Think again. What would happen if your organization went down for a few days or a week? How would that impact productivity and the bottom line? What would happen if a virus took over your workstations and you lost or compromised all your data? Can you really afford to continue this break-fix relationship? We say no. We realized a long time ago that that relationship doesn’t work. Join a like-minded Managed Services provider that can provide you with the support, strategy, infrastructure and that you need ot update your technology and be successful in the long haul.

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