When there’s an emergency, your IT company can often feel like your own personal hero. The traditional IT service model (or break/fix) could be likened to your local fire department. Like firefighters, IT technicians under this old service type would show up when you need them most—during an emergency. They would typically solve the immediate problem, but may not search for or detect an underlying issue if it wasn’t automatically apparent. Still, they put out the fire and save your business from the current and most pressing issue. This approach to IT is sometimes a necessity—after all, technology can often be unpredictable, and emergencies do happen. However, a business model based on such uncertainty just isn’t practical.
This outdated method causes more problems than it fixes. It’s inconsistent, costly, and impersonal. It just doesn’t make sense.
Inconsistent
The service provider of the past relies on the inconsistencies of technology to profit from your company's pain. This business model is reactive, meaning the technicians only fix an issue once it becomes a huge problem. Along these lines, the customer is less likely to inform their IT support of a problem if it’s merely an annoyance because they don’t want to pay for the technician to fix it until it becomes a major obstacle.
Impersonal
Service providers using this business ideal are more likely to think of their customers as numbers, tasks, or dollar signs. These companies profit from their customer’s pain, but don’t necessarily want to take the time to get to know them or understand their needs. Therefore, these customers will often have recurring issues that don’t get addressed fully.
Costly
With a reactive IT service type, businesses are more likely to incur unnecessary costs. Besides the obvious service-based costs of this break/fix method, there are other hidden costs that may not be as apparent. For instance, hardware needs to be replaced more often because it is not being monitored and cared for appropriately. Some costs aren’t even monetary: data loss occurs more frequently in a reactive business model because the IT company often doesn’t offer monitored backup support.
There’s no need to worry, though, because the future of IT is here. Companies are straying away from reactive IT service and are instead adopting a proactive managed service standard. Of course, firefighters will always be necessary to put out fires just like IT technicians will sometimes be required to respond to an emergency. However, IT support has become a different sort of hero these days.
Learn more about the future of IT in our next blog. Stay tuned!
