1. If your current IT support team think it’s about the computer and not the person using it
This is one of the first tell tale signs that you are dealing with a tech company that does not understand business. This is not to say they don’t know their tech, it just means they value the computer hardware more than the team member using it. You often see signs of this when your technician spends more time talking about megahertz, RAM and hard drive space instead of listening to your team member and finding out how they use the tech for their daily tasks. You see it when your IT Support is more interested in getting their job done on their schedule and not when it’s convenient for the person using the computer.
Think about this: if you took a person who everyday of their life is the proverbial Sunday driver, and you place said person in the fastest car known to humankind, ask yourself, “How will they drive?” I feel I would be placing a pretty safe bet by saying that I think they would still cruise down the road 10 km under the speed limit with an arm out the window and no care for the ever-growing line of cars behind them looking to be somewhere. The truth of the matter is that every person has a preferred vehicle and every person has a preferred way to drive. This holds true for technology as well, and Lunarstorm takes the time to understand you as a driver before we ever try to place you in your tech vehicle.
2. If your current technical support person is nowhere to be found!
I would like to say this is not as big of a problem as it is, but I can’t tell you how many times Lunarstorm has received a phone call because there’s an immediate problem and the current one IT person at the company is sick, on vacation or otherwise unavailable. While all of the above are a reality of life, if your business depends on technology it can be a heavy burden to bear to be out of commission and waiting, knowing you don’t know when you will hear back from your tech support or that they won’t be back in time to be helpful. Lunarstorm is a business tech company, and you won’t see us delayed because we are fixing home computers or because one person is sick.
3. If your kids & their friends do more with their phones than you & your team can do with your office computers & network
I’m sorry, this one makes me chuckle more than anything. My nieces use their musical device to video conference with their uncle and me, and they are between nine and eleven. I go into offices that have all the same devices if not more powerful, and the employees can’t even get the email running smoothly. In today’s day and age, to me this is simply wrong. I believe this is because of poor technical culture and techs who (referring to point number one) don’t think about the team member as much as the hardware they are using. Lunarstorm takes the time to train your team to make sure that they can benefit from what we consider standard technology these days.
4. If you hope — more than know — that you have a disaster recovery & backup plan
The last point made me chuckle, but this one makes me want to cry. I’m not a fan of fear-mongering, but I can tell you the majority of businesses that I have walked into in the last 15 years have not had anything that could possibly pass as a quality backup or disaster recovery plan. Everyone claims they have one, and love to wave their tapes and backup drives at me to prove it, but during a crunch you would be surprised at how many of them failed when you tried to recover data from what the backup drive said was a successful backup. What a server and tech calls a successful backup and what a business owner calls a successful backup are two different things. Information that usually never gets passed can be dangerous for business owners. Even if the system reports a successful backup, it still may not get all the files. Only through regular test restores and managed backups can you ensure your work and confidential information is safe. Lunarstorm accepts nothing else.
5. If you have never had the opportunity or confidence to leave your office and work where you want, when you want
This is one of the most disappointing things for me to hear from a business owner and their team. The reasons I’ve heard range from being unable to the office remotely, to the access being terrible at best for those who have remote access, and lastly the fear of being hacked. All of the above again fall to unwelcoming tech culture and a poor performance by your IT Service company. As someone who has conducted a meeting from an airport, written a quote from a tablet sitting in a boat with a fishing rod and am currently working from a coffee shop, I think that this should be a bare minimum of what you should be able to do with your technology in your business in 2013.