The Money Pit of Doing It Yourself

I was helping Dave, one of my long time clients, with an email problem the other day.  He was complaining of email performance issues; things such as “it takes a long time to send messages,” and “email takes forever to show up when I check the Inbox.”  The first thing I do with this type of problem is check the Internet connection .  Diagnostics showed it to be working well, but there was a lot of traffic being sent out from his network.  So much, in fact, that it was crippling the ability of his office to operate.  After a bit of detective work we pinpointed the problem:  Dave’s in-house Exchange server is going berserk.  “It’s been a problem for a few days…I was hoping it would fix itself,” he explained.  He’s holding off on calling his server technician because an average visit costs over $600.  Many small businesses can’t afford a bill like that on a regular basis, yet problems seem to pop up on a regular basis when you’re running your own equipment.  It’s a bad situation that’s really affecting Dave’s bottom line.

In another case, I was speaking with my friend Sue.  She was in need of a new website and spent over $1500 to have a professional web designer create one for her.  They designed a very nice site: it had pop-out menus, interactive graphics, the ability to purchase products…it even had fancy graphics of horses strewn everywhere.  This struck me as odd as Sue’s business has nothing to do with horses, but ‘eh’, to each his own.

Sue was very pleased with the site, but soon discovered a couple of critical flaws:

Dave and Sue’s cases are not isolated.  In fact, from what I see, it is actually the norm in small business.  The Internet is an essential tool to sell any company.  It is the main way today’s customer locates you, contacts you, and becomes informed of your services.  Yet, many choose “do-it-yourself” methods for their web-presence that end up costing a lot of money with the least effectiveness.  It’s along the lines of going to a Wal-Mart and saying “That blender costs $40?  I’ll just get the parts and build my own!”  You could do this, but the $200 in parts you’d have to buy and the training you’d have to go through will still not create the quality of blender you get for $40.  On top of that, if something breaks you have to worry about fixing it yourself.  Nobody would actually do this, but it is exactly the approach many businesses take with their Internet services.

The solution is simple: instead of trying to do everything in-house, consider using service providers that can supply your company’s Internet needs.  They’re becoming more and more popular in the small business community because they make all the tools and resources that the “big guys” use accessible at a fraction of the cost.  Your thirty person office probably can’t afford a fully staffed IT department running multiple servers, but a service provider could take the place.  I’ll apply typical service packages to the above situations to demonstrate:

The most comforting thing with either solution is phone support is included with either pricing model.  You have your own IT staff to contact if something doesn’t work correctly.  Have a question?  Either myself or one of my colleagues are on hand to demonstrate features or fix cryptic error messages.  The worst part of my job is when a customer calls for help and I find that they have made a bad decision and backed themselves into an expensive wall.  Fortunately I have an arsenal of easy fixes to get your business back on track.  In the end, I’m happier providing something that I can actually help you with, and you’re happier because you feel in control of your business again…it’s a win/win situation.  All of it Prius, sump pump, and wire chewing cat free!