Since most small businesses don’t need and can’t afford a full-time IT person, SMBs frequently either relied on John, the receptionist’s flaky-but-computer-savvy cousin to handle the support, or Bill, the company’s software engineer who knows enough to help out but it isn’t really his job. But as IT becomes mission critical to small businesses, a quiet revolution is taking place…

As networks and security issues become increasingly sophisticated and state and federal compliance regulations affect more and more SMBs, many companies have found that turning over their support function to a company that specializes in providing such services is a better option. That’s where we come in.

In fact, it’s often more productive to hire an outside company that offers a combination of part-time on-site IT support with on-call helpdesk available in case problems arise when the on-site person is not around. A full-time person might spend half of his/her week sitting around and then when fires start in more than one place at once, their time is stretched thin. This is another reason that an outside company – such as Rent-A-Geek, LA – adds value by having a team of support people to handle multiple instances at one time.

Available Services
No matter what your exact IT requirements, we have several levels of contracts which may fit your needs. Our Geeks have all worked for major companies in IT and we use that information collectively to make decisions for our clients.

Additionally, we currently provide support for several very tech-savvy companies – including software companies, web sites, and engineering firms.

We can arrange for a monthly or yearly contract that guarantees you access to a specified number of support hours at a pretermined price. Our plans are currently structured so that the more hours you use, the less those hours cost in a given month – this incentivizes us to make things work as smoothly as possible.

Identifying Your Support Needs

The decision to outsource your IT support might sound simple, but if you don’t know what your requirements are, you might find yourself paying for services you don’t need, or worse, finding that you don’t have enough coverage. If you’re comfortable with a contract that’s available during standard business hours, you’ll pay a lot less than you would if you needed extended hours or 24/7 support.

Think about how much on-site support you really need. Having a part-time person visit on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis can substantially cut your support services bills.

If you own a very small business or you’re cost sensitive, you might be interested in a service that provides per-call or per-incident support rather than a monthly service contract. We currently offer these services, but our priority is for our contracted clients.

Some outsourcing companies claim that they will save you money because you won’t have to pay employee benefits, but that’s not always true. After all someone has to pay the staffing costs, either directly or indirectly.

We have experience supporting a generic Microsoft office environment with a file server or two, as well as specialied situations with custom software and hardware.

For example, an engineering company we support uses 3D and math modeling software, and a software company uses a private subversion server, another client has a retail shop with point of sale (POS) system. If you are in a niche industry, we might have people who are familiar with your industry or have previously held full-time positions supporting similar companies.

We recommend keeping the tech support in-house only if you would have difficulty locating a person with the specialized knowledge that you need, or if you’re sensitive to giving control of an important business function to an outside party.

Choosing Rent-A-Geek, LA

We know that it’s important to make sure that Rent-A-Geek, LA’s IT support service can deliver the services that you need. Many providers tout that their staff has vendor certifications, but that only guarantees that they were able to pass an exam. It doesn’t demonstrate the ability to troubleshoot or address your support needs. At Rent-A-Geek, LA, we are confident that you will notice and appreciate our consistency, positive attitude, and professionalism. For this reason, we offer trial contracts with special pricing for a limited period so that you and your company have a chance to consider us before making a commitment.

We understand the importance of trust and it is the cornerstone of our business. It’s important to trust an outside company with your passwords and confidential information. As part of this, we are more than willing to sign non-disclosure agreements to protect you and your privacy.

We generally assign one main person to handle your account with 2 people on standby in case there is more than one person can handle alone. In addition, we collectively discuss projects and decisions using our different past work experiences to help guide our tech strategy from multiple perspectives.

Support is provided on a monthly basis and we do not charge minimums, do not round our time up, and we do not charge for drive time. This is NOT the industry standard. We custom tailor our agreements for each client, so there is no cookie cutter pricing or list of services that we can list on our web site.

The Bottom Line

Seriously consider outsourcing your IT support with Rent-A-Geek, LA if you don’t need a full-time person but you do need flexible services that you can’t provide in-house. A good relationship with us is more like having a true business partner who specializes in making sure that your technology strategy matches your business goals. We will endeavor to ensure that your operation runs smoothly and that your business will be more productive.