Our IT consultation Services helps define your business’ IT strategy. IT moves at a fast pace and our consultation services will ensure that the right technology and the right approach is used within your business to deliver the most effective approach to IT.
For a simple fixed fee, 64Computers will manage and support your IT as if we were your in-house team. We’re confident that the level of service you get from us is second-to-none, which is why there are no lengthy contracts to sign. No minimum terms, no buy-in clauses. Just great service, at great prices.
You tell us what you need, we tell you how much it will cost per month and that’s it. You don’t even have to worry about moving from your current IT service support as we will handle that for you – it won’t cost you extra. We plan and forecast every aspect of our IT support and we’ll manage it so that you don’t have to.
This approach enables you to work like clockwork and for us to become an integral part of your business. If you already have an in-house team of IT specialists, we pride ourselves on our ability to complement them to create a seamless system of support.
Hire an IT expert
It’s an age old saying that if you want something done right you should hire an expert, whether you’re doing building work on your house, fixing a car or implementing an IT solution.
The reality is that whilst you could invest internal resources to plan and implement a change, you’re almost certainly always going to be better to hire an expert who has been there.
In-house IT vs External IT Support Consultants
A typical in-house IT Manager/Engineer must be a generalist, not a specialist. They may carry out one major email system migration every 3 or 5 years when the business makes a change. During this time, they will also be involved in a variety of different projects, ranging from desktop refreshes, phone system replacements, connectivity changes, firewall and network upgrades etc. It’s human nature that if you only do something infrequently you’re not going to be a specialist in it.
A specialist external IT support consultant will be carrying out multiple similar projects every few weeks or months. It’s conceivable that they could easily carry out 10-20 email migrations in a single year for different clients with different requirements. This frequency allows the consultant to become very adept in avoiding common mistakes and really know how to make the change smooth, seamless and trouble free as possible, so your business is as unaware as possible that an infrastructure change is even taking place.
Hiring an external IT Support Consultants also means that you have additional resource available from a whole team of engineers with varying depths of experience across various technologies. This can be invaluable as in most infrastructure environments, technologies overlap so looking at one aspect in isolation is never a good plan.
This expert advice and experience doesn’t just make the delivery of the project run smoothly but it also helps you make the right choice when choosing a solution. Their experience in what’s worked for similar businesses in the past can provide a valuable steer to the decision you’ll make.
Modern IT Managers are typically facilitators of IT and should work closely with the board to translate the strategy of the business into IT requirements, then carry out the necessary due diligence to appoint to best supplier to deliver the project. The days of the IT Manager locking themselves away and being unapproachable are a distant memory. They’re now very much key players in making sure IT systems are aligned with the needs of the business.
Our Approach and Your Involvement
Before we start any project, we like to find out how much you and your staff want or need to be involved. Sometimes we’re asked to just make it happen and involve people at key stages only when we really need to. In other situations, we’re asked to work as closely with the IT staff and business as possible.
Whenever possible, we feel that it’s good to have your IT staff involved. After all, when we’ve completed the project, your staff will need to maintain and support the environment moving forwards, so it’s important that they understand how it all works. Many of our projects are carried out alongside our client’s IT staff, they will learn about the technology we’re implementing. They’ll get valuable insights into why particular decisions are being made and why things are being setup in a certain way. Having this personal interaction is far more valuable than your staff reading numerous and potentially conflicting internet guides on how to deploy a product. We often find that it also invigorates the internal IT Manager as they feel part of a team and enjoy learning about the new technologies.
Another advantage to our approach is that by involving your staff in the project, they may identify tasks which they can carry out. For example, on an email migration there may be changes which need making on workstations, updates which need applying or software which needs installing. Your IT staff may well have the skills and time to do this themselves so we’re more than happy for them to do this and you can save some money – it means you’re only paying us to do tasks that you can’t do yourself by hiring an expert.
Creating Roadmaps
It’s often easy to lose sight of your goals, we will produce a roadmap detailing all your goals and how we’re going to achieve them. Each goal will have a priority and the cost, so the business can decide what it wants to achieve and when with complete visibility on the costs.
Within a strategy, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of information that is produced.
That’s why we produce easy-to-read roadmaps that show, not just tell you, what it is we will be doing and when. This gives you a simple step-by-step document to follow that includes spending, timescales, problems and solutions. This document clearly shows which direction the business is travelling in and what the end destination is.
This is one of the most essential parts of the Infrastructure IT services we offer and it’s completely free.
Before we know how we can help your business, we need to know where you currently are. Sitting down with you and looking at all your systems we are able to create and provide a Service Improvement Plan (SIP) that supports the business as it grows and improves.
We look at:
- How you use your IT systems
- How well your systems are performing for your business use
- What problems/issues your staff are facing
- Your concerns or questions about future changes
- Whether the IT environment is set up in the most efficient way to give the best performance and reliability to your business
- The financial impact of your current systems
- Your data recovery requirements
Whatever we find, we make sure it’s clear what we are going to do about it and how important it is.
We’ll sit down with you in person and discuss all our findings, how we’re going to implement any changes and make it clear what’s essential and what’s not. Some parts may require investment, but others might be configuration, which we can do as part of our on-boarding process, providing infrastructure IT services to fix these.
It’s all part of our service to help understand exactly what’s best for you and your business.
IT Spend Analysis
Sometimes, doing nothing can cost more in the long-term than updating to a modern solution. By analysing current spending against potential spending and predicted outcomes, we can demonstrate how investment now could mean huge benefits for the future.
We will produce a thorough IT Spend Analysis that will detail all current equipment and services including:
- Current outgoings
- Expected updates/improvement costs
- Anticipated problems with software and equipment falling out of warranty or no longer being supported
- Potential upgrades, new solutions or equipment that will save money in the long term
- Growth analysis and its impact on current IT provision
You will be able to accurately project what will be spent on IT provision and how it will be spent. This means there are no surprises. Any IT spends will be predictable, manageable and, more importantly, will help the business grow.
Our Network Monitoring System gives you peace of mind by enabling our experts to keep a close eye on the performance of your network. If any alerts occur, our technicians can remotely resolve problems before they develop. The monitoring support covers all critical systems including:
- Firewall updates plus security and threat management
- Network operating system patch management
- Server security management
- Server-based anti-virus updates and management
- Backup monitoring
- Anti-spam solution monitoring
- Availability monitoring
- Performance and predictive failure monitoring
- Intrusion detection (IDS)
- Notification correlation
- Vulnerability remediation
- Application and asset compliance
- Warranty management
Defining Strategy
We’ll make sure that we understand your business and how the current IT solutions are used to define IT strategy that is unique to you. If there’s an in-house IT Manager, or even an IT team, we will work closely with the entire business to identify current weaknesses, future plans and propose an IT strategy which addresses them.
Our approach to IT strategy looks at everything. From security to total cost of ownership, processes to requirements – it’s all about making it work and providing you with a holistic view of your IT so that you can make informed decisions.
Many of our clients work with complex software and specialist equipment, so part of our strategy will be to manage these carefully. We aren’t just looking at the impact on equipment and software but the impact for the business.
Defining your strategy will take many hours of time spent understanding your business, how it works, what its needs are and why you need our help. The basis of the business’ strategy will then be formed around this.
We look at:
- Your future goals and targets
- Expansion and growth forecasting
- Financial investment plans
- Business development needs
- Training and support requirements
The strategy will provide you with a clear framework around which we can easily explain how our services will support and improve the business. Define your IT strategy with 64Computers!