Choosing the right IT supplier

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No small business in this small country should need to be advised about the importance of good business relationships – with customers, suppliers, bankers and state agencies. Yet when it comes to technology, a surprising number of SMEs – and especially owner-managers – forget what they have learned and applied in every other area of their business. Maybe it’s because the whole IT thing seems a bit intimidating, or because they think it’s just about buying PCs and gear, but poor, short-sighted souls chase bargains and great deals, and end up wondering why it costs so much and
why it’s so hard to get someone to fix things!

What many small business owners fail to realise is just how important it is to develop a proper relationship with one supplier – with someone who will not only understand the nature of your business, but will also be able to help you as you expand and grow. It may seem relatively simple, but buying computers for example,  is not an area for bargain hunters unless you know exactly what you are doing – and what you are buying.

‘Special offers’ arise for good reason, usually because the product is about to be superseded by something else so the price is reduced to shift stock, or because the specifications have actually been tailored to the price point. But the real problems, and usually most of the direct and indirect costs, come from what computers are designed to do.

PCs run an operating system (usually some version of Microsoft Windows) and software applications. They are also networked to each other and to the Internet. All of these ‘soft’ elements throw up problems, some simple and some fundamental. Trying to get things to work together that were never designed to (like different versions of Windows and applications) is one of the most common areas of strain in many SMEs.

When do such issues rear their ugly little heads? End of month account runs are a regular, peak periods usually feature, but actually Murphy will run his Law over your set-up for maximum inconvenience anyway. Cascades are always entertaining: first one thing goes haywire then just when it’s fixed, possibly while it is being fixed, the next system falls over.

What does the harassed boss do in these circumstances? Why very little, of course. Phoning the IT supplier is a matter of minutes while some SMEs do not even need to do that because their systems are remotely monitored and an alert is already winging its electronic way.

What, you do not recognise that scenario? Could it be that you have bought your systems (all at the right price, of course!) from several suppliers over the years and that the last one came down in the boot of the car from an auction in Dublin? If you bought some stuff direct from the manufacturer be sure there’s no real problem.

Pack up the machine(s), send back under guarantee and the service people will give you a ring next week when they’ve had a look. There was nothing wrong with the PC? OK, have to look at the software then. Who do we get to do that? Ah, problems now alright. The first three outfits in the Golden Pages either don’t want to know or are apparently vampires who start at €100 and hour to come out in daylight. 

The hard way
Many SMEs learn the lesson the hard way, realise how totally dependent they have become on IT and set about finding a better way to manage their technology – usually by establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with a reseller. Others, alas, are apparently content to have history repeat itself and run around and ring the first person they see in the phone book when it all goes pear-shaped.

‘We had our share of computer panics and disasters in the early days,’ says Tony Hennessy, managing director of the financial services firm Growth Finance, which is involved in factoring (invoice discounting) and debtor management services for SMEs. ‘We even had an outfit “fix” a three-week-old PC that I brought back personally by re-formatting the hard drive and wiping all our carefully transferred data! It must have been a virus, they said. But once we moved up to a proper network it was essential to have a supplier who would look after us properly and be available at the end of a phone.’

Growth Finance has been a client of Rathgar-based Dutron for over five years. It commissioned them to set up their network and has purchased its PCs and most (but not all) of its other IT hardware from them over the years. ‘We know the boys – and their mobile numbers – and they know us and our systems’ says Hennessy. ‘They’re often stretched but they never let us down and their business hours are thoroughly flexible. We’ve also had an annual budget for IT and related stuff so we have not been hit by nasty financial surprises when we have had issues – like the right thing to do was upgrade something.’

This is the most common story; all over Ireland, small firms and IT resellers and support companies are happily working away. In small towns and country areas perhaps especially, a good relationship with a local IT firm means your support is close at hand. Actually, SMEs in such areas tend to do very well. The power of word-of-mouth reputations means that IT companies really do have to look after their customers.

Another approach, of course, is when you are setting up a new firm on a green field site and decide to outsource all of the IT systems to a single supplier. As Sam Simington puts it, ‘We needed to get on with our business and I wanted one ass to kick when anything goes wrong!’ Simington set up Mediterranean Shipping Company(MSC) in Sandyford in late 2002, the Irish subsidiary of one of the world’s largest container shipping companies. With just 17 staff this is a tight operation that depends on smart systems but has no in-house IT expertise. ‘We are reasonably proficient users, because the industry is quite high-tech these days — e-mail communication with ships at sea and entering port is normal, for example, and our group’s track and trace systems are very sophisticated.

But we have no real in-house expertise and, in any event, we wanted specialists to set up the network and the systems and then to look after everything. I went to Sabeo because I knew the MD Ned McQuaid personally in a different capacity but was gratified when alternative quotations showed they were competitive as well. We also needed everything set up quickly when we had signed the office lease and we were recruiting, fitting out and beginning operations all at the same time.’

MSC has what is effectively a fully outsourced IT supply and support relationship with Sabeo for everything except some specialist group applications for which their technicians liaise with the MSC systems team in the Geneva HQ. ‘If the system is down, we’re down, so I shudder to think where we would be without a service provider like Sabeo to keep us up and running,’ says Simington.

A slightly different green-field start confronted Leeann Garratt and Amanda Cornhouse when they arrived in Cork to set up a recruitment agency in partnership. They had worked as colleagues in the business in London and knew exactly how they wanted to run their new agency, Alex Harp Recruitment, including wishing to install smart IT systems which would help them manage their business more efficiently.They found PFH Computers before they found their first office. ‘It was important to us to get our systems and support in place properly because the recruitment business today is totally dependent on good IT and we also knew we would be doing some of our business internationally,’ recalls Garratt.

Their relationship with PFH is now very solid, she says, having gone through two changes of premises and having reached a network of 18 PCs for 10 staff (the firm has separate areas for project and ‘quiet’ work, training, etc.) with all the growing pains all of that inevitably entailed.

‘They have many much bigger clients but we were never treated as second class. In fact we probably were and are pretty demanding, but we appreciate the response we have always received.’

Trust is key
We asked some IT firms to talk about what helps build good relationships from their point of view.

‘It’s really all about building trust,’ says David Laird, managing director of IT services company Datapac. ‘There is an element of give and take and for example we would always try to be helpful over and above the strict contract terms — ad hoc telephone advice and help, for example, is not something you want to be invoicing.’ On the other hand, he suggests, clients sometimes have unreasonable expectations; with hardware and software all working together for a specific set of needs, there are always going to be some issues. ‘Most customers go through the learning curve and
realise that IT is not a miracle technology — systems can and do suffer from hidden incompatibilities and also need to be upgraded from time to time.’

But continuity gives real benefits to both sides, he points out, starting with the simple but important element that the company that knows your systems well can fix problems more quickly, without time/money-wasting investigation, and is also in a position to give positive advice and explanation about what upgrade or add-on options and constraints you have.

Pims Business Services in Waterford is a Sage accounts and payroll systems reseller with over 200 customers headed by husband and wife team Nigel and Jenny Pim. ‘Local relationships are actually very good for quality, I think,’ says Nigel Pim. ‘My clients have sometimes talked about big, remote outfits where you never get to speak to the same person twice.

From our side of things, getting to know your client’s business and systems well means you can give a better service and more cost-effectively for both.’ The kind of service SMEs need, he says, is very much a mix of personal, business and technology. ‘Ask around, talk to other people in business locally — you’ll learn more about potential suppliers than you ever will from a sales pitch.’

Darren Philips has some direct advice for SMEs to enable them to get the best from their suppliers:

‘Set a budget, whatever your size, invest steadily in technology rather than waiting for things to show their age – and go broadband right now if you have not already.’ Philips is a founding director of Dutron, a six-person team that has been in business for 10 years looking after clients in Dublin ranging from teleworkers to a 60-workstation distribution company. ‘What broadband does is save time and money – much more than it costs. We can manage a network remotely, for example, which saves the customer the costs of having a technician come to work on-site. Software updates, from Windows service packs and bug fixes to anti-virus, can be quickly downloaded and installed – and one of the commonest cases of trouble is a virus or worm that gets past a neglected antivirus installation.’

His pet hate is mix-and-match installations where the gear has been bought separately and erratically over time. ‘It’s a totally false economy. Lots of elements are going to be incompatible or require a lot of tweaking to work together properly. People forget – until they get the invoice – that technical call-out is based on results in only one sense, fixing the problem. If that takes three hours on-site instead of one, or even just 15 minutes remotely, because of a cobbled-together set of systems with no coherent structure the customer is incurring costs that could quite probably have been totally avoided if some sensible decisions had been made in the past.’

The Reseller from heaven
Looking for a reseller is a tricky business. When doing so, look for the following:
– Ask around for recommendations when choosing resellers
– Ensure that the reseller you choose knows your business as well as you do
– Look for resellers who have a proven track record
– Opt for a reseller who talks your language rather than one who will blind you with science

– Choose a reseller who will listen to your needs and give good independent advise rather than someone who will push the most expensive solution on you regardless of your business requirements
– Ensure that the reseller you choose have a good support team who will fix problems immediately and won’t talk down to you.

The Customer from Hell
We asked our three industry sources for examples of customers from hell – or at least what they do that is guaranteed to hinder the relationship. Here is a list of behaviour IT resellers really hate.

– Doing your own thing without even a phone call – ‘bargain PCs’ with the wrong versions of Windows, for example, or a whole new accounts software package that cannot run on your system.
– ‘Now that you’re here’ – adding in tasks or problems to a service call that were not flagged.
– Asking for advice, then doing something that shows you either did not trust or did not believe what you were told.
– Slow payers: ‘We’re a small business too, so chasing cheques soon erodes my goodwill!’
– Penny pinching, mix-and-match, buy as cheap as you can and only when you have to – ‘They are plagued with problems and they always blame the last firm that tried to help them.’
– Rudeness, especially to technical staff like phone support or field technicians. ‘For maybe a couple of grand a year in sales it’s just not worth it.’

19/07/04

Read More: Hardware & Equipment