How Service Management has helped a small business A recent client has given me permission to anonymously post a summary of a service management audit on both the blog and the website as a way of sharing how small businesses could benefit from such a review. The client in question was a motor trader who had been in business for several years, running a successful car sales business with a well established reputation in the area. They openly admitted that they were car sales professionals who had cut their teeth in the market but did not really have much of an ideal about IT. The initial consultation came abut as their windows based PC kept throwing up messages about an unlicensed copy of XP and they were thinking about buying a new PC to get rid of it. Within 2 hrs of spending time with them the following points were unearthed:
- They did not need to buy a new PC. They had picked it up from a computer fair and it was riddled with copied software. The main PC was of a good spec and we were able to source a local PC guy who could rebuild it and price up XP, office and an anti virus product to bring them up to compliance
- They had no disaster recovery for their two main services (email and autotrader updater) but once again we were able to discuss how these services could be accessed from another PC with a view of installing the auto trader application on a second PC at one of the owners houses as a contingency plan
- Two key suppliers needed reviewing. Firstly it appeared that their website hosting and delivery to the internet had not been written to current standards and did not capitalise on any Search Engine Optimisation. Secondly their credit card authorisation company had been delivering a poor service for some months, but they did not really know where to go
A report was provided outlining the key points and possible solutions and is currently being reviewed by the client.
If you feel this type of service would benefit your small business and you would like to see a copy of the report (in which the identity of the company has been masked) please feel to contact us on:
quoting CustRep01