What they can -- and can't -- do for your company

Technology is beautiful—when it works. But when it doesn’t, more and more businesses are looking to technology consultants for service. Kevin Miller works with Tech Solutions Group, based in San Francisco, which provides information technology services to small and medium-size businesses. Executive Travel asked him what it’s like to help companies get up and running again after technology fails them.

Q. WHAT KIND OF PROBLEMS DO COMPANIES CALL YOU IN FOR?

A. It can be as simple as getting a call that “the Internet is broken” or that an application doesn’t load. I can fix those types of things over the phone, because often it just means rebooting the computer. I deal a lot with viruses and setting up new computers. Lately, we’ve been doing a lot of switching to Macs from PCs.

Q. WHAT KIND OF CALL RAISES YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE?

A. A bad day can be multiple things. For example, a virus can go through a whole company, or something happens that is beyond our control. Like when email goes down, it may be hosted by AT&T, [so] there’s really nothing we can do.

Q. WHAT MAKES A CLIENT EASY TO WORK WITH?

A. They trust that we’re looking out for their best interests. We do supply a service, but it’s not cheap. We try to get in and fix the problem, not Band-Aid it. There is a time frame where it gets cost-ineffective. It could take me five hours to fix your computer’s problem, or I could set up a new computer in three hours.

Q. WHAT DO YOU WISH CLIENTS UNDERSTOOD ABOUT YOUR JOB?

A. That they are not our only clients. If it’s a technical emergency, we can get someone there in an hour or two. But if they can live limping along, we’ll need to schedule it.

Q. ARE THERE PRACTICES THAT YOU’D RECOMMEND TO CUT DOWN ON SERVICE NEEDS?

A. Yes. Think about what you’re doing before doing it. People tend to click without reading. For example, there’s a virus that’s going around that comes as a birthday card email. Several of our clients have recently had that. I asked one, “Is it your birthday?” He said, “No, my birthday’s in March.” So why did he open a birthday card? Also, there are preventive maintenance measures: Make sure you’re doing [software] updates, and restart your computer every once in a while. It fixes a lot of problems.

Q. IN SOCIAL SITUATIONS, DO PEOPLE ALWAYS WANT YOU TO FIX THEIR COMPUTER PROBLEMS?

TECHNOLOGY BYTES

SPAM accounted for 90 to 95 percent of all email in 2007, up from an estimated 5 percent of email in 2001.

Source: Barracuda Networks Annual Spam Report, 2007

COMPUTER SERVICES CONSULTING is a $26 billion industry that’s expected to grow 5.4 percent per year over the next five years.

Source: IBISWorld, 2007

THE NUMBER OF KNOWN COMPUTER VIRUSES increased by 468 in the last year, with just over 711,000 new viruses identified in 2007.

Source: Internet Security Threat Report, April 2008