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There are many compelling reasons to engage in a managed IT service model from your technology partner. It allows for a clear and simple model of pricing while delivering a comprehensive service solution to your business. It provides a far better value to businesses both large and small. Most importantly, it allows for a methodology of proactive response and the addressing of potential issues before they happen.

The idea of proactive service versus reactive service would appear to be a fairly intuitive concept. Most of us buy into the necessity of proactive automobile maintenance, preventative home maintenance as well as our own health care. Yet, it is typically the idea we buy into and not the actual execution of the idea. It generally takes our vehicle making some kind of alien noise before we decide to act. When was the last time you changed the filters in your drinking water or changed your home air filters? I am guessing it would take a threatening note from your physician before you decided to take those thirty minute health walks?

Technology is no different in the need for a proactive model versus a reactive one. Unfortunately, it often takes smoke coming from the building before we decide to implement what we know to be common sense. I recently encountered an example of two customers on different sides of this coin. Both customers were businesses we had provided services for in the past. I sat down with each owner to discuss the need for a more proactive response model that would allow us to provide better value and effectively protect their environments. One business understood the value of technology and was very willing to invest in it. The other was not. In fact, that owner’s quote to me was “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. My response in retrospect should have been, “unless it costs twenty five times more to fix it once it does break.” What happened to the business who decided to maintain a reactionary model was they were compromised by a ransomware virus within sixty days. The cost to recover the infected data from the ransomware creators was more than the cost of our entire annual service offering. I advised the owner that should they decide to pay the ransom there would be no guarantees it would decrypt all or any of the information. In addition, even if they successfully decrypt their company data they would still be very susceptible to similar attacks.

This story is meant to illustrate how a willingness to invest in technology can ultimately affect the future of a company. A few, simple proactive steps allows for the easy avoidance of catastrophic disasters and the associated costs and stress that follow.

Troubleshooting issues after they occur is much more costly than taking the appropriate measures to prevent them in the first place. This is true with our cars, homes, health and certainly technology. “If it ain’t broke, make sure it doesn’t!”