Managed IT service is a great way for the small business to save money on their IT support costs while still getting the coverage they need. One of the ways that an MSP is able to keep their costs down is by proactive maintenance. If an MSP had to fix every computer problem a company had after it became a problem, the service would largely be untenable for the small business. Today, we look at the proactive maintenance feature of our IT management strategy and how our clients save a lot of money as a result.

What is Proactive Maintenance?
The term proactive maintenance suggests that we fix things before they need fixing. In essence this is true. Computer components and networks are complex structures, and give off a great deal of information that, if you know what to look for, can be of great benefit to an organization’s ability to sustain productivity. Aside from this, a proactive strategy to anything can bring the benefit of foresight. This rings doubly true for a computing infrastructure. The more informed you are about the potential issues any IT infrastructure could have, the better you can be about mitigating the resulting problem altogether.

The proactive approach to IT support begins as soon as you start a managed IT services agreement. Our technicians, who are all certified and trained to leverage automated options in our monitoring program to find even the smallest issue. In doing so, issues don’t become problems. By alleviating issues before they can hinder operational efficiency, a business can be more productive, and therefore more profitable.

The Cost of Downtime
To best understand what effect downtime can have on a business, you have to first understand what it actually costs your business. There are all types of downtime calculators online, but the simplest way to think about it is the money you are spending for your employees to work, your utility costs, the money you spend maintaining your business, all of that, you have to add to how much you are losing out in revenue by having these people not work. The number comes back much bigger than you’d imagine.

By helping your organization virtually eliminate downtime induced by hardware and network problems, Data Net’s service actually pays for itself very quickly. There aren’t as many services out there that can provide that kind of ROI that fast.

How Does Proactive Maintenance Work?
The proactive maintenance system that we utilize works through a Remote Monitoring and Management tool. Essentially, our software crawls your network and infrastructure for inconsistencies. It does this constantly. Whenever something comes up that isn’t quite right, our technicians will use their considerable expertise to fix the issue well before it can cause any problem. In the event that there is a critical failure, we are already ahead of it, making the situation known immediately. Some reasons for critical equipment problems include:

• Operator misuse: When equipment isn’t used properly, it can have a big effect on the hardware issue.
• Skipped maintenance: When an IT department is overextended, it can look to save time by neglecting some standard maintenance.
• Unusually heavy utilization: Like humans, when machines are asked to work hard for extended periods of time, they risk breaking down faster.
• Faulty replacement parts: When parts are swapped out, they may work for a time, but after a while, they cause the system they are working in to prematurely fail.
• End of lifecycle: While you can extend most equipment with solid maintenance, eventually, like everything else, it fails.

Monitoring systems for signs of issues can go a long way toward getting the most out of all of your equipment. For more information about proactive maintenance and what Data Net can do to reduce your organization’s downtime, call us today at (760) 466-1200.