(Editor’s Note: A new monthly installment will spotlight the world of technology through a question-and-answer session with Cards Technology CEO and founder Sam Card. This first piece spotlights the company’s growth from a humble computer repair shop to a full-service technology management firm that thrives on building valuable and lasting relationship with the businesses of Delmarva.)
Q. What is different today about your company, regarding its capabilities and services, compared to 10 years ago?
A. The better question is probably what isn’t different? I think the biggest shift happened between 2003 and 2004, when IT downtime started to become a major problem. For example, customers would call to report that their email was down, and I would let them know that I would be out there tomorrow. This would be met with a panicked response of “No Sam, our emails are down, you don’t understand. We can’t run our business.”
Fundamentally, we can wait for our IT to be fixed, but we can’t afford our IT to be down. People don’t turn around and do paperwork anymore while they wait for a fix. This new sense of urgency sparked the development of our proven 5-step process; we get to know our customers and, from there, come up with a plan that helps them stay productive and avoid downtime.
Q. How have your services changed?
A. The direction used to be, “we’re here when you need us, call if something comes up.” That’s known as a break/fix model of IT support, where the customer controls service delivery. We made the shift to a Managed Service model, where our focus is on anticipating and understanding an organizations’ business needs. The Managed Service model results in an improved outcome for your business, since the management and delivery of technology is completely outsourced.
As the general sense of urgency increased, the need to be proactive versus reactive became a priority.
Q. Let’s talk about a client who was helped by Cards Technology’s proven process.
A. We created the process because we noticed that other IT providers would jump in to deliver service without first conducting a thorough overview. This would lead to the discovery of problems later on, which got very expensive and hurt the customer’s business. A clear assessment and proper standardization in the beginning is key.
Recently, we were approached by a client in the healthcare industry who had a time and materials IT company but not a managed service provider. We typically find that clients who haven’t worked with an MSP are handling IT problems on their own and telling the provider what to do, instead of the other way around. This client was inviting security breaches in and experiencing other technology issues because no one was looking out for them. We performed a complete assessment from top to bottom and made sure that our unique set of standards were implemented for preventative monitoring. We stabilized the environment to prevent security threats and created a comprehensive plan for future IT needs.
Card can be reached at [email protected]. To learn more about Cards Technology, visit www.cards-tech.com.
