IT Industry Secret

WARNING: We are about to let you in on a IT industry secret about how most computer Information Technology companies really make their money! We will cover the three main types of IT Support companies and what you can expect out of them.

The Pay-By-The-Hour Information Technology Computer Company: Outsourced Computer Support Consultant – Typically this is a smaller or one-man shop.

In the IT Services Industry, we call this the ‘break-fix’ IT consulting practice. That’s because this type of company bases most of their income on the fact that your technology will break, and you will pay them to fix it. These IT Service Companies usually charge per hour for IT Support, or perhaps offer a discount with blocks of prepaid time. Their technicians come to your office to solve a specific computer issue. These on-site technicians are expensive, and the IT Company they work for often has expectations for billable time their employees need to have. It is a pretty standard practice for the technician to manage their own time to an extent, and they are responsible for producing their own billing and that is reflected in their pay. 

In a situation like this, the tech wants to complete the task and move on to the next client to rack up enough billable hours to make their boss happy. This leaves them in a position where they simply don’t have the time to resolve other issues or run maintenance on systems to minimize downtime and ensure that your entire infrastructure is running smoothly. There’s no reason to show anyone in your organization how to resolve even a simple problem (rebooting a router for example) because that means one less billable call in the future. Plus, answering questions and checking into other issues might cut into the other billable visits that tech has that day. This method works well enough for residential users with computer troubles, but let’s be serious, you are trying to run a business.

In the end, you end up paying for the technician to come out along with the employee(s) who couldn’t work due to the issue. Why in the world would anyone want to do this way, other than they typically cost less per hour.