Hammond & Shinners
Specializing in labor and employee benefits law, Hammond and Shinners, P.C. represents a large number of unions and Taft-Hartley trust funds in a wide array of industries including industrial, construction, utilities, transportation and service.
The Challenge
Hammond & Shinners started as a typical break/fix IT client. If a server or member of Hammond and Shinners staff has an issue or a question, they would call and the IT guy would fix that issue. In this model, things get fixed quickly but there are three major flaws: 1) IT is very reactionary and typically companies spend money on the noisiest and most recent problem, not necessarily the most costly, 2) There is no insight into critical issues that can lead to major problems like backup, security, or server issues. 3) The last is financial and could be the most important, in the “call when things are broken” service model there is very little incentive for the IT company to fix the problem forever because they have a financial benefit in fixing problems. The bigger the emergency, the bigger the invoice.
Hammond and Shinners moved to the HeliosVision managed service model when we discovered an imminent server hard drive failure that could have been a disaster. It is impossible to catch every issue before it is an issue however there are many warning signs that with the proper onboarding, tools, and process can be caught early. All managed plans have this key component, we are watching things that typically has never been monitored.
The Solution
Hammond & Shinners chose the HeliosVision BackOffice plan. For a budgeted fixed monthly fee, Acropolis engineers are responsible for all aspects and service of their server and infrastructure environment regardless of the issue. If their fileserver goes down in the middle of the night and requires after hours support, it is covered. If they have issues with a router or firewall, it is covered. In addition, our management and remote control tools are on the desktops and laptops and in the event their end users need support, we can efficiently address their issues for a reduced monthly fee.
“We were paying strictly hourly as a non-managed client. This year we changed to a managed plan which covers the server support and management. Desktop and other issues beyond that, we pay for those as we go. You guys helped us come up with a solution that works for everybody.” – Bob Mandava, Partner
“I would like to comment on the quick responsiveness as well. Most of the problems we’ve had, everything has been fixed quickly and that has been a very positive aspect.” – Nathan K. Gilbert, Attorney at Law
The Return
The real benefit of being on the right plan isn’t paying to fix issues when they break, that is actually the smallest benefit. The real value is our IT partner and our business is aligned to prevent and fix issues as efficiently as possible as we both benefit when office IT operates effectively and problems are fixed efficiently for a predictable budget.
“For us everything seems to be working which is important to our business. Also, the availability of somebody to come in and access things was great, we would really like to commend you guys on that. 24/7 support is great, which we have needed on a Sunday afternoon, at an odd hour, and we’ve been able to call and get someone to solve whatever we needed.” – Bob Mandava, Partner