The Importance of a 15-Minute Call

Susan owns and operates a successful multi-million-dollar appliance business with her husband, two daughters, and more than a dozen employees. Aside from her main store, there is a satellite office and a bustling warehouse. Her business makes extensive use of QuickBooks, and because all her employees need to access it, she uses the Enterprise Edition that runs on a Windows Server.

Susan had an “IT guy” who cared for the server and computers. But over time, several incidents caused her an increasing amount of frustration. An unknown bad actor hacked the server – she never knew what, if anything, was stolen. There were instances of malware on numerous computers. Then came the day she realized something was very wrong.

Susan’s staff could not print invoices – or anything for that matter – from the server. Her IT guy came to look at what was wrong. At the end of a long day, he took the Windows Server back to his office. He had it there for three days.

Before he left, he installed QuickBooks on a seldom-used computer; however, the PC was not powerful enough to run QuickBooks properly. As a result, the staff could not process invoices quickly, deliveries were delayed, and business suffered. To make things worse, the bill to fix the problem was over $2,000.

In a conversation with her CPA, Susan learned that I spent about an hour fixing his server printing problems for only $200. The CPA told her to invest in a 15-minute call.

Susan contacted me to evaluate her business and technology. Using a unique 27-point assessment that I developed over the years, I learned that her IT guy was fixing recurring problems and billing for them each time. He didn’t use adequate security protections to keep malicious actors out of her network, nor did he take any measures to foil hackers and malware. Susan frequently spent thousands of dollars for repairs, but the IT guy was not looking at the bigger picture to ensure her business’ safety and continuity.

I provided Susan with a project to remediate the existing shortcomings, upgrade the security, and implement a monitoring and maintenance plan for her server and office computers. Susan quickly reviewed the plan and decided it was time for the old IT guy to go. Within a few months, the technology upgrade was complete.

Susan now has peace of mind because I take a proactive approach to any potential problems. She no longer gets headaches because I completely removed the possibility of having someone ever take a server out of the office and back to their shop for three days. Susan’s business has continued to grow, even during the pandemic, with no downtime.

So how about you? Are you ready to eliminate your computer headaches?

Go ahead and schedule a 15-minute call now!