The Five Flaws of the Break-Fix Approach to IT

Some business owners view their IT infrastructure like they do their plumbing or HVAC maintenance – they prefer only to pay to fix problems as they manifest.  There’s nothing wrong with plumbing or HVAC companies.  They are some of our best customers.  However, the comparison is severely flawed, mainly because plumbing and HVAC systems are generally static infrastructures, and they aren’t the object of attacks from without (yet).  The old break-fix approach to managing IT is on life support, mainly because of five inherent flaws.

Break-fix approaches to IT inherently lead to a giant ball of band-aids.

Whenever a tech is dispatched to resolve a problem for a client in a break-fix arrangement, that tech is there to find the quickest remedy possible.  The tech knows that too much time spent will result in a complaint from the customer.  Thus, the tech proceeds to take the shortest route possible to restore functionality.  This band-aid approach only addresses the symptoms manifested, while it ignores the underlying root cause.  The conundrum for both the tech and the customer is that the customer doesn’t want to pay the tech for the time it would take to diagnose root causes, and the tech feels pressured to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Over time, this leads to an inefficient and cumbersome wad of band-aids that usually has to be completely overhauled to overcome.

Break-fix approaches to IT misalign missional objectives. 

The band-aid approach leads nicely into the next flaw.  Have you ever wondered if an auto mechanic has your best interest in mind?  Again, there are many great auto shops out there, but sometimes you can’t help but wonder if you’re being taken advantage of in some scenarios.  The break-fix arrangement creates competing incentives against the provider and the customer.  The computer shop only gets paid when there are problems to be solved.  The customer is literally incentivizing computer problems.  Conversely, in a contract arrangement, the service provider is rewarded for operational efficiency and penalized by customer downtime.  In that kind of arrangement, both the provider and customer have completely aligned incentives and objectives.  You both become a team who works together to do everything possible to eliminate issues entirely.

Break-fix approaches to IT cost more in the long run.

When the organizational objectives and incentives are aligned, the natural result is more efficiency and less downtime.  If the service provider is competent at all, you will see a marked improvement in IT operations.  When problems are addressed in a contract arrangement, finding the root cause and eliminating it is the primary incentive for the service provider.  Being proactive and working to eliminate problems before they create downtime or other inefficiencies is top priority.  These proactive and thorough approaches to IT management enable you to come out ahead in the long run.  Furthermore, you have a built-in consultant who can help you navigate your technological hurdles and leverage technology as a force multiplier for your organization.

Break-fix approaches to IT severely handicap your ability to recover from a disaster.

Most companies discover they have a backup problem when faced with an occasion requiring them to rely on it.  Imagine having your critical data encrypted from ransomware, and learning that your backup data was encrypted along with it.  Imagine a drive failing, and discovering your last successful backup was from months or even years ago.  Unmanaged backups create these scenarios, and they are completely preventable using modern backup and recovery technologies.  While the goal is always never to need the backup, when you do need it, you REALLY need it.  Make sure you have a managed backup solution in place. Gambling with company data is a losing proposition.

Break-fix approaches to IT are nearly impossible to budget accurately.

The break-fix model of IT support naturally ebbs and flows.  Even when you have a couple of years of history to help budget, you are one severe event away from blowing that line item.  A drive dies in a server or critical workstation, and you have an unplanned expense.  How can you effectively budget for IT support when you are one successful cyber-attack or one critical device failure away from a ton of unexpected remediation time?  Some of that can be assuaged by planned upgrades, but cyber-attacks and other threats to today’s businesses by nature are unplanned events.

The Obsolescence of Break-Fix

It’s time that we put the death knell into the break-fix approach to IT support.  It hasn’t served businesses well.  It has proven to create IT dysfunction.  It has misaligned the objectives and incentives toward efficiency and operational integrity.  It costs more in the long run, and it is nearly impossible to budget accurately.  We’ve moved on from the TRS-80s, the Pentium chipsets, and on-premise email servers – it’s time to move on from the break-fix model for IT support.