If you’re old enough to remember “The Six Million Dollar Man”, you remember the phrase in the subject line of this blog. If you’re not, there’s always YouTube.
In the IT industry, because of the fluid nature of technology itself, and an ever-increasing influx of options, IT support companies like ours are in a constant state of adaptation. As our clients’ needs change, so do we.
In previous years, our change has focused mainly on keeping up with new technologies like VoIP, VPN, and Virtualization. In more recent years, social media and the cloud have been where we put our educative efforts.
What we’ve seen over the last few years, however, has told us that simply staying up on current trends and technologies may not be enough to continue providing our client base with the level and quality of service to which it has become accustomed. We’ve seen, undeniably, an increase in dependency on IT as something that doesn’t just assist our clients in their business, but that their business is built around.
Because of this increased dependency, downtime has become much more of a concern. For this reason, this year our efforts have gone beyond just continuing education for our staff. I am happy to announce to you that as of Jan. 1, 2012, Network Depot has acquired the assets, staff and customers of Evolve Technologies of Fairfax, Virginia. The end result for existing Network Depot clients is that we will be in a better position in 2012 to provide more timely response to their support needs. The increased size of our support team and the additional experience the Evolve staff will bring to us will enable us to help our clients address their increased dependence upon IT in their business.
Other areas we will expand upon during 2012 will be hybrid cloud storage to enable increased mobility and less platform dependency for our clients, application-specific training in Intuit (Quickbooks) and SalesForce solutions (at this point, almost all companies need accounting and customer management solutions), and development of contingency plans that will empower our clients to stay productive even though one resource or another may not be available to them at all times.
Personally, my role at Network Depot, LLC will continue to shift away from the day to day operations and more to the part of it that I enjoy the most, talking to folks about their plans, their hopes for their business, and how we can help them get there. Paul Barnett is now fully ensconced and empowered as the COO of Network Depot, and has done a wonderful job of leading our team, and implementing methods that are providing more consistency and satisfaction in our service level. I’m looking forward to getting away from my desk and out and about!
I’d love to know your thoughts, and welcome any suggestions you might have that can help us in our ongoing commitment to provide first class service in this and following years.
Happy New Year!