MANAGED IT SERVICES
DONE FOR YOU
Our IT Shoulders:
Neutralizing Your Threats.
Empowering Your People.
Steering Your Tech Path to Success!
BUSINESS MSP SERVICES
MANAGED IT
SOLUTIONS
First Call believes good decisions start with a good education. We’ve put together good information that’s easy to understand and digest. Still have questions? Reach out to a sales rep.
MANAGED IT SERVICE PROVIDER
THE VALUE OF HELP
DESK SUPPORT
Most organizations need to stay away from the price edges.
Pay too little and your experience will be you aren’t getting enough of what you need and the real costs are growing given your people are experiencing too many issues, bad things are (or will) happening and the decisions/investments you are making aren’t ideal.
Pay too much and you’ll experience too much given your size, complexity, and needs which isn’t ideal either and will also drive unforeseen costs.
What is the real value of help desk support? Consider the gaps you need to fulfill, the skills your existing internal IT team are missing, and ongoing needs for Cybersecurity maintenance, IT Updates, and Communications Management.
Balance these needs with the value of consistent business delivery, less downtime, and the relief of knowing you’re covered to really determine the value of help desk.
HOW DOES YOUR IT SERVICE DESK WORK?
How fast can we get help?
How fast do you resolve issues?
What’s your turnaround time?
This is always the first set of questions for a very simple reason. Their current approach isn’t working for them and they are experiencing lots of issues. Their mindset is to find a new provider who will fight the fires as soon as possible.
What we learned long ago is that it is difficult to have a good relationship when everyone is in fire-fighting mode. Firefighting is stressful and feels more like emergency management than IT management.
Our Help Desk is calm, cool, collected and fun. They have command of their day, our clients and offer a predictable, consistent and enjoyable experience. This exists because First Call and every client we work with has a commitment to acheiving high uptime and low issues/severity.
This is measured, analyzed and when its trending in the wrong direction addressed.
Our clients do not ask questions about our response time or turnaround time because they don’t have a lot of issues affecting their work, operations or outcomes. This isn’t a happy accident but rather a result of our approach.
AN EFFECTIVE IT SOLUTIONS TEAM
DO WE WORK WITH THE SAME PERSON?
This question is a classic. Its driven by relationship too. People know if they could just work with the same IT person, the relationship would grow stronger and stronger with time. They are right – sort of.
First Call does not offer the one to many approach that people initially yearn for. Why? Because it has severe limitations.
The first is the fact that IT is a multi-faceted profession made up of specialists. The generalist model where one guy/gal knows a little about a lot broke down years ago as the demands, complexity, and risks around IT picked up pace. It is a lot like the medical field. You no longer have a single Doctor for all our needs, we work with a team of specialists as we move through our lives.
Our IT service approach is team based. The worst part of working with a team of 3rd parties is the feeling you must constantly educate them about your situation. First Call has attacked this problem to make sure you always feel that connection. Nearly every system, process and cultural value is around insuring we have the tools, knowledge and capabilities to get you the right solution, advice or resource for the job at hand.
At First Call we provide a team of specialists who are focused on the relationship and the key outcomes of fewer issues, less risk and better investments/decisions in IT.
Our technology is outdated …how can you help us change/modernize?
Modernization means different things to different organizations. Part of the relationship is helping you understand where you are, what’s possible (in a way that makes sense), creating a plan/budget and a staged approach to getting there over time versus trying to do everything in one big swoop. (rip and replace)
First Call’s goal is to help every client implement technology that is flexible (given all the different ways people need to work today), affordable, securable and supportable.
Most importantly the technology must be adoptable! This means your leaders see the benefits of making the change, that there is a plan to help users get value from the change in their work and that there is a plan to retire the legacy tools/approach to avoid confusion, cost and overhead with trying to use multiple systems for similar functions.
First Call is a Microsoft Gold Partner and has not only the technical expertise on technologies like Microsoft 365, Windows, Phone Systems, etc but also the soft skills to develop your people around using the tools.
IT & CYBERSECURITY SUPPORT
PROACTIVE IT SUPPORT CAN HELP PREVENT
EMERGENCIES
No one at First Call wants “bad things” either. Cyber security events, incidents or disasters (bad things) will turn a good relationship bad quick.
When this question comes up we quickly turn this back to the client. What are you doing today to protect yourselves? The answers typically range from being unsure to a certain level of confidence as they name their firewall and/or antivirus.
If all parties don’t want bad things to happen they need to have a clear and defined approach to addressing their cybersecurity gaps.
Here is the Good News
First Call works with organizations like banks, rural access hospitals, criminal justice in small government that have very clear, defined and regulated approaches to managing security. We maintain these standards on behalf of our clients and are keeping them aligned. With each client we are applying and appropriate subset of these standards to them to insure we have a clear and defined approach given their level of risk.
Our Philosophy
Our philosophy is that all organizations who use IT and have more than 10 employees need to have a core list of protections, controls, and services in place. Certain industries have higher needs or, the risks are simply larger given the size and complexity of the organization.
Whatever your situation, First Call has a full complement of specialists, technologies and services that are affordable for organizations to insure you can protect, detect and respond to threats.
COST OF IT SERVICES
HOW MUCH DO YOUR IT SERVICES COST?
If you are ready to change your approach, and you see the value of a relationship based managed service provider the big question is how much does it cost?
There are IT service providers providing IT managed services from anywhere from $20/seat to $150/seat per month. The higher the price, the more tools and services are bundled in.
TOOLS
- Antivirus
- Firewall hardware and software
- Backup hardware and software
- Backup cloud storage
- Windows Patch Management
- Monitoring/Alerting
- Scripting
- WIFI hardware and software
- Anti-Phishing Software as a Service
- Managed Detection as a Service
- Response Software as a Service
- Advanced Breach Detection Software as a Service
- 3rd Party Software Patch Management
SERVICES
- Intake/Triage/Dispatch
- Help Desk
- System Administration (remote)
- Technology Alignment Manager (onsite)
- Solution Design/Estimating
- Security Operations Center (SOC)
- Network Operations Center (NOC)
- Projects/Professional Services
- Security Event Management
- Security Event Remediation
- Auditing/Alignment (Regulatory)
- Auditing/Alignment (non-Regulatory)
- Application Training/Support
HOW MUCH
HELP DESK
SUPPORT DO YOU NEED?
A major cost driver in IT service agreements is whether or not Help Desk is billed as a flat fee or pay per use. First Call has clients using both approaches. The clients decided based on the following factors:
FIXED COST
IN HOUSE HELP DESK
OUTSOURCED HELP DESK
THE NUMBER ONE QUESTION
WE THINK PROSPECTIVE CLIENTS SHOULD BE ASKING:
Ask about our people!
Who we hire? Why we hire them? How we treat them? How we develop their service skills in addition to their technical skills? What values we promote? How we measure the experience for our clients? Do our people smile, laugh, enjoy the work they do and who they do it for?
LET’S TAKE THAT WEIGHT OFF YOUR SHOULDERS!
HOW DOES
ONBOARDING WORK?
The first meeting is called the Kick-off meeting, at this meeting your vCIO will go over expectations, scheduling, and requirements.
The vCIO will be your main point of contact and work to continue the business relationship for the life cycle of your agreement with First Call.
OUTSOURCED IT COVERAGES
WHAT IS COVERED/NOT COVERED IN YOUR IT AGREEMENTS?
This is a big problem with Managed IT Service Providers. Their agreements aren’t clear and they end up just doing what needs to be done at any given time. The results are inconsistent. We believe clear coverages and exclusions in plain language really help all parties understand and maximize the agreement.
CLEARLY DEFINED
COSTS THAT MAKE SENSE
We typically go through this once the parties feel there is a good fit between our organizations and the costs make sense. Then we go through it again with all stakeholders during the onboarding kick off meeting to insure anyone who wasn’t involved in the initial decision.
WHO ARE
YOUR COMPETITORS?
There are countless places both locally, regionally, and nationally to get Help Desk or firewall management or backups handled. Taking an a la carte approach is one way to do it but that’s not us. We are looking for a long-term relationship where clients trust us with their IT and depend on us to make a positive impact on their business and operations.
We hire A-level people. Treat them well and enjoy the journey of trying to get better at what we do and how we do it every day, week, month, quarter, and year. We are based in Montana but have clients throughout the region.
If your approach to IT is no longer meeting your needs please engage us.
Jayson Olthoff
Business Development Executive- First Call Computer Solutions
Meet with Business Development Director, Jayson Olthoff to discuss your IT, Cybersecurity, or Unified Communications needs!
406.721.6462
