Posts made by Deleted74295

God Bless America.
Happy to be a citizen of Europe when I read about this kind of insanity.

At the windows 10 Spice-world session, there was a huge amount of heckling, I was worried people were going to start throwing shoes at the MS guy.

It seems a bit too much like the Spiceworks model.

Give away a free app but make it compulsory to join the community/get adverts.

I'll try the product in a lab but I'm a bit wary of it.

@MattSpeller said:

@Breffni-Potter Fly me in, I'll buy you a drink

Sure....I'll invoice you.

Whose around for day-2? Not yet met anyone in person from here.

Ugh @NodeBB
Why don't you work properly on my IPhone Missed out on all of this during the day.

@scottalanmiller said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

@Breffni-Potter, how are you planning on getting clients? (I don't have any advice, I'm just nosey!)

Always a point of curiosity for me too.

Yep, hardest thing for any new business.

I already have a confirmed set of clients, My personal reputation for delivering a great service, with professionalism in very high pressure situations is high. They know who I am and what I can deliver.

As for residential, I have a paticular profile of customer in mind, These are very much home office based clients, who are used to business level service and they will be paying business rates.

On a borrowed laptop so can't write an essay but does that help clarify?

@thecreativeone91 said:

I'd take this company as en example http://www.computer-rescue.ca/

They provide Home support. Yet they are on spiceworks and ask so many simple questions about adding new DCs, DNS configuration etc there.

No comment as to their competence, when you have a look at my profile do you get that same impression?

Their RMM uses an install based console, why not a web browser console?

I'll give it a week for a few to dive into it.

@IRJ The Helpdesk, inventory, purchasing, Spiceworks software install yes

Unitrends, never used it personally so no comment.

@IRJ said:

LOL!

I've said worse on the community I got asked to evaluate a bunch of these products, tried it in a lab, on a couple of client sites, it was horrible. Bit weary of the "Spiceworks is FREE" fans.

@IRJ said:

Any difference between free and spiceworks free?

Spiceworks Free
Utterly slow performance.
Too many features, not enough good.
Plus you get adverts galore along with a not great UI.

Actual Free
None of the above.

Oh sorry, you were asking about Spiceworks free

@thecreativeone91 said:

IMO most businesses not looking for low end support will avoid a MSP providing any level of support to home users. I know I would.

Is there a business decision behind that? Surely that's the same as saying "Oh I won't use that level of internet provider, I want this provider" and pay £££ for a connection. I'm not targeting the average PC world user. I'm trying to aim elsewhere.

Having read though the...almost insane level of typing in such a short space of time, I'll lay out a few items for clarity.

• @scottalanmiller Thank you for the detailed feedback, very helpful.
• Having read through it...I'm pretty convinced I need to change my pricing strategy and messaging.

What I might do is create a separate site. Home.DaraIT.co.uk which is entirely focused for that market, so there is no confusion mixed messaging.

Then for the business users, spend more time on the site about education, rather than trying to tie up knots contract wise and (to my annoyance) you are right that it is near impossible.

As a preference, would you prefer to have me on retainer per month or only be invoiced per hour as a business customer.

@scottalanmiller said:

Those are all separate services. AD DC, DNS and DHCP are three unique things that can be run together, separately or any part of them not at all.

Yes they are but they are treated as combined. All are needed for a functional network, whether you only run AD or run all 3.

@scottalanmiller said:

I'm confused. Not sure what you are saying here. Are you saying you will just turn down the customer?

I'm saying that it is impossible for a customer to immediately book and agree a service like this. This is not Amazon, there is no pick an item, add to basket, pay by credit card then you get it. So the scenario you are describing will never happen.

@scottalanmiller said:

So even though they act as a single server, you will bill for each one as if it was unique? Doesn't seem like good customer value. How are you defining a "server"? Some people see that as a cluster, some as a physical machine, some as a VM, some as a service, some as a container.

Defining it by the workload of the device, the maintenance work required,

@scottalanmiller said:

Not to you it isn't. But to a customer, it will easily feel like a bait and switch. Lure in with what looks very much like a flat, predictable rate.

Yes but for your example said customer is expecting to pay £75 per month to manage 200 servers. When the £75 clearly states "per server" how per server is defined, you should talk to us about.

@scottalanmiller said:

And a VM takes far less management than a physical machine. Why would each VM cost the same as something so much bigger?

Because Exchange needs the same level of management and care whether it's physical or virtual. Which you know Virtual Exchange helps but not massively.

I do have prior MSP experience, both on helpdesk and in project management In the case of this hourly tech, I caught him working on other client sites throughout the day remotely, using our site as a base, not happy.

@scottalanmiller said:

You will run into the customer with lots of VMs, all Windows, and all running something weird that requires all kinds of special support pretty quickly and find that you are bleeding weeks of labour on a single server contract and have no time to support anyone else, even though the other people pay you 100x the rate.

Yes but all someone has to do, is fill in a form, pay me the money via pay-pal and boom, hit me with their crazy requests which is not the case.

@scottalanmiller said:

• As a potential customer, when I look it seems that you handle ongoing support of servers that I have set up myself. But how much support do you really do? Some questions would be...

Your stand-alone AD DC would be treated as a single server £75 per month. Your cluster, how many servers in that cluster?

I will manage the AD portion for you.
AD/DC/DNS/DHCP are all treated as the same app on the server.
Lots of the same apps on different VMs, you'd talk to me for a quote, most likely the cost would not increase, but it depends on what other apps (Sage, Quickbooks, ect) you are loading onto each VM.

I.e an Exchange Server VM and a DC/DNS/DHCP/AD VM would be billed as 2 separate servers.

Goes back to work-load, but bearing in mind the website is not the contract or scope of work.

We'd need to talk about that, it depends on your requirements. Why have you got those tools?

Give me a second to type a few thoughts.

@scottalanmiller said:

• Word of mouth pretty much does not exist in business. It just doesn't, especially around IT services. There are tons of reasons that we assume around this, but the reality is if a customer loves us or hates us, they tell no one.

I'm afraid I disagree, I've seen a UK based company grow from a garage based office, to a premium installation and service company in 25 years, all without advertising, all through customer referrals, networking and building a brilliant reputation.

I've sat in meetings where people swap contacts about different sectors who have helped them, from the brilliant Project Manager who delivers on the building project, to the contact who runs a print firm who swoops in to save the day at the last minute.

@scottalanmiller said:

We've had customers for over a decade that could not live without us and love us to bits but..... have never discussed us a single time.

In 10 years, you've had no positive referrals or recommendations at all? How do you know that a customer did not recommend you?

@scottalanmiller said:

• Establishing trust doesn't really work. You aren't doing the work that establishes trust, you are just burning the opportunity to get the ball rolling.

@scottalanmiller said:

(MSP style agreement, ect edited for brevity)
This type of agreement requires you both to overcome the inherent "enemy" structure of the agreement. It rarely works.

Yes but what's to prevent an hourly agreement becoming the same enemy of the client? I've hired on "hourly" techs at providers, I got billed 8 hours to fix an issue with a single wireless access point, they got dropped quickly after that. Where as if the issue is:

"Fix my wireless AP please" - I make no extra money by dragging out the fix, I would do if I was hourly.

Scope-creep "Just one more thing" happens in hourly fixes as well, even if you draw up a gun and say no, they still argue either way.

@scottalanmiller said:

It is more cost effective to be risky and lose some clients to disaster than to do the right thing for most of them.

Contracts or type of agreements aside, If doing the right thing is not at the core of what you do, you'll find ways around those agreements. This is impossible to prevent, this is more about the values of the provider.

@scottalanmiller

www.geeksquad.co.uk/services/tech-support

Different market, different country. - They are many similarities between US/UK but some things are very different.

The more well known "GS" version we have in the UK is PC world, mostly retail stores and they have an office in each store for GS style techs.

Right, no more stolen logo. if the site has not yet changed for you then you might need to clear cache. Brochure has been yanked for now, to be updated.

Interesting to have a few fresh set of eyes over the whole piece.
I guess I'm influenced more from live events.
You can hire a projector from anyone, but the quality of the engineer to set it up and operate it will be different depending on where you go. All of them disclose pricing for the bread and butter, hire our kit, basic bench work but anything custom is quotable.

@thecreativeone91 said:

I think a B2B IT company shouldn't see it self as commodity, if people want commodity they go to geeksquad, staples etc. you shouldn't try to compete with them.

B2B and consumer to start with. The UK price for comparison is 3x what geeksquad charge, too many people have been burnt by that level of service. I guess you'd compare it with a two star hotel trying to compete with a 4 star hotel, both of them are hotels but you get a different experience.

@scottalanmiller said:

Although I think maybe the goal is bench support, not IT consulting or MSP work. From reading the site, I did not get the impression that the goal was to provide IT services.

Bench Support is a starting point yes. Are the other aspects not presented well enough? Auditing/Project work? Spent quite a bit of time on the lay-out so that all 3 areas were clear.

@JaredBusch said:

We very specifically do not reference ourselves as a MSP.

Unless I'm badly mistaken, I've been careful not to say that anywhere.

@JaredBusch said:

We bill by hour period. We tell our client, there will never be a month with no work as everything needs checked occasionally, but if nothing is wrong, that will be minimal time.

I might say that then it places the client in a very disadvantaged position. Let me play this out hypothetically.

Apart from trusting that you will do the right thing by them, there is no motivation for you to prevent issues happening to them down the line as that is hourly work you will want to bill for, if bad things don't happen, revenue vanishes.
Not accusing you of anything, just spinning the other side of the coin.

Where as with this model, it is in my interest to prevent issues/problems, If a client is stable and happy across a year, that's a years worth of revenue as my incentive plus by preventing issues, I get an easier life. You cannot prevent 100% of problems but there is a lot of work you can do.

Having said that, I agree with blocks of time to a point, If you've commissioned a whole new server/network, then surely you would want to mark a separate pool of billable hours for "snagging" - Which if they don't use is refunded to them but they've been up front and agreed it.

@scottalanmiller said:

Normally they rely on being a loss leader for sales, as well. Look at GeekSquad or Staples, their bench services are only there to improve sales. You need the sales to make it make sense.

Don't intend it to be a loss but it certainly is meant as a means of beginning to establish trust, The most powerful advertising tool I have ever seen is word of mouth recommendation, If we deliver a service that is.

• On time
• On budget
• Trustworthy
• High Standard

With the small stuff, you are more likely to take the risk on larger projects.

There may come a time when the bench side is dropped completely, I've done some number crunching and although the numbers are not massive, they are enough to justify offering it to those who need it, especially when you already have a pool of clients.

Really grateful for the points raised/feedback. Would be pleased to hear more.

@scottalanmiller @thecreativeone91

http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/942602-moving-to-the-cloud?source=homepage-feed

One Tin-foil hat consultant.