Compare these two scenarios to see which model works best for your business:

Break-Fix (Reactive) –

• Issue/problem arises
• Contact support provider and report the issue
• Support engineer most likely attempts the initial repair remotely – if unable to resolve – or the nature of the issue requires hands-on support – engineer is dispatched to your location
• Support engineer resolves the issue
• Client is billed for time and material to resolve the issue

Issue #1 : With “break fix” your issue is most likely not a priority”. Priority is given to organizations that have a proactive relationship in place.

Issue #2 : The engineer is not as familiar with your organization as they could be – simply because it may have been weeks or months (or possibly never) since they were in your system.

Issue #3 : The issue is most likely quite in-depth, since there was no monitoring in place, hence the issue is now a “10” when if the environment had been monitored 24x7x365 the issue could have been resolved when it was a “2” or a “3”.

 Managed Services (Proactive) –

• Issue/problem arises
• IT management provider gets notification through monitoring software – monitoring software opens support ticket with details of the issue
• Support engineer immediately begins to diagnose the problem – issue is most likely resolved remotely – since support engineer has full and ready access to the environment – but if not, the support engineer is very familiar with the environment and if dispatch is required they know exactly what needs to be touched – and where it is in your facility
• All steps in the resolution are captured in the support engineers ticketing system – for future reference or need for further diagnosis

Advantage #1 : No need for you, the customer, to call support provider

Advantage #2 : Your issue is handled with highest priority because you are a managed customer

Advantage #3 :You have access to an entire team of IT experts

Advantage #4 : Zero down-time for the customer, since the issue was automatically delivered to the support company – and issue was resolved before it became customer facing

Advantage #5 : your billing for the resolution of the issue is included in the agreement – leaving you with a predictable monthly invoice – which has been budgeted for

Summary –

Many companies feel they should take the route of break-fix IT as a means of cutting costs and to minimize the IT budget. The issue with this approach is that you never know when something will break, and what toll it will take on your company financially (or with down-time). This is a risky path to take and leaves the organization with a very volatile IT budget. The reality is that with technology being what it is today, managed services (proactive) is normally cheaper than break-fix (in the long run).