VBJ November 18

THE VALLEY BUSINESS JOURNAL
10 www.TheValleyBusinessJournal.com
November 2018
Your Local Chambers
Temecula Valley Chamber of Commerce
www.temecula.org
Murrieta/Wildomar Chamber of Commerce
www.MWCoC.org
Menifee Valley Chamber of Commerce
www.menifeevalleychamber.com
Lake Elsinore Valley Chamber
www.lakeelsinorechamber.com
Hemet/San Jacinto Valley
Chamber of Commerce
www.hsjvc.com
See how the chambers can
help your business.
Technology and Professional Services – You’ve got a Full-time Staff
Accountant and an Attorney, Right?
It is important that anyone seeking
to proffer advice, or present information
as factual, should attempt to expose any
bias that might affect their opinions. In
the interest of full disclosure, I am the
Service Manager at an IT management
company. We offer IT services to small
to medium sized businesses and become
or supplement their IT department. With
that out of the way, you are free to take
what follows with an appropriate ‘grain
of salt.’
Working in or around small to medium
businesses, you are no doubt well
acquainted with the concept of professional
services outsourcing. Engaging
the services of a separate business entity
to fulfill a role that would otherwise
require a highly trained or specialized
(read as: expensive) employee is what
allows many SMBs to stay competitive.
Although a large organization would
have a payroll department, corporate
attorney(s), and a staff accountant, most
SMBs choose to outsource these services.
This allows the SMB to not only
save on the cost of these specialized services,
but to leverage outside expertise.
Take for example, a staff accountant
within your business versus an accountant
at a CPA firm. Both of these individuals
would be providing your business
with a service in preparing your taxes.
An accountant that works for you knows
your books—and only your books. This
is contrasted with an accountant working
for an accounting firm, who has
multiple clients and deals with a wide
breadth of issues. Although payroll,
accountancy, and legal services are all
professional services SMB owners are
comfortable outsourcing, IT services are
often handled non-professionally.
“I’ve got a guy.” “My wife’s cousin’s
son is really good with computers,
he’ll set this all up for me.” I’m sure
you’ve heard or made statements similar
to these over the course of your career.
Now, contrast them with other critical
aspects of your business’ infrastructure.
“He watches a ton of Law and Order, he
can write the contract for us.” “She just
passed 8th grade math, let’s see what
she can make of this tax return.” Seem
ridiculous on its face right? Consider
how critical your IT infrastructure is
to the day to day operations of your
business. Why are we so eager to trust
it to amateurs, or indeed, to ignore it
entirely? The problem, I believe, is one
of perception. Computers and the software
they run can seem at once esoteric
and stable. You can look at break-evens
and tell that something isn’t right, but
your computer throwing up a weird error
message just seems perplexing and
slightly inconvenient. Or, conversely,
those of you that have an IT guy may be
thinking that he or she is always trying
to get you to spend money. It is time that
we challenged this perception.
I cannot imagine that many of you
see your CPA as an unknowable cost
center, the same can probably be said
of your payroll company. It is imperative
that business owners shift their
perception of IT—those that wish to
grow and adapt to a constantly shifting
marketplace understand that IT is not
only a critical part of their business
infrastructure, it is another area to leverage
professional services outsourcing.
To tie back into the earlier example
of the CPA firm versus the in-house
accountant, IT management companies
can leverage a depth and breadth of
experience furnished by their variety
of clients that is just not accessible to
the in-house “IT Guy.” Moreover, this
additional experience usually comes
at a lower price point than a full time
employee, just like utilizing an outside
CPA firm. Finally, the It management
company model lends itself to the SMB
marketplace—they’re all about efficiency,
because what they’re selling you is
their time. It behooves the provider to
create as stable an IT environment for
your business as possible, to minimize
downtime and their time spend maintaining
it. It’s also in their best interest to
resolve your IT related issues as quickly
and efficiently as possible—their margin
depends on it.
As I stated at the beginning of the
article, I have a vested interest in our
organization, and the industry as a
whole. That is not to say however, that
we’re looking to run the “IT Guys” of
the world out of business, nor drive
every SMB into the warm embrace
of an IT management company. I
humbly ask that you change your perspective—in
the immortal phrasing of
Apple Computers, “Think Different.”
Mythos Technology is an IT consulting
and management firm that provides
Managed Technology Services including
hosted cloud solutions. For more
information, please visit www.mythostech.com
or call (951) 813-2672.
TECHNOLOGY
by
by
Tristan
Steve Fillingim
Collopy