Break/Fix Archives

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.

Before we start to answer this question, let’s first consider answering when an “IT Guy” (or Gal) IS enough. Some organizations are adequately served by what the industry calls “Break/Fix” service. Simply put, when something goes down, you have a resource on speed dial who can come out and get things up and running again. Many companies use this model successfully or, at least, some variation like perhaps buying a block of hours – this is the same as break/fix except you are buying time in advance and often at a discount. Perhaps some of your work is still on paper and your processes are mostly manual. And on the surface, this arrangement is workable (even if not ideal) for businesses who have very simple technology needs.

When Break/Fix Breaks…

At some point, as a business becomes more operationally mature, it begins to leverage technology as a competitive advantage and the underlying technology to drive more efficient workflows becomes more complex. You are now running servers with key line of business applications that require running a database. Your workflows are more efficient, your company can scale its efforts, and processes have become automated, reducing human error. As a result, organizations begin to value its technology operations as being strategic and mission-critical to company success. As the operational maturity level (OML) continues to increase, an inflection point is reached where the break/fix model no longer works and is a hinderance to efficiency and security. Your needs have outgrown the old model.

Think about it this way – the incentive for the break/fix IT guy is misaligned with your organization. They are rewarded (paid) when your technology is down, not when it stays up and running. This creates a dynamic where addressing root cause issues of technology failures and building more robust (but also more complex) systems is not in the best interest of the person doing the work. Why should they invest energy to prevent failures rather than band-aid symptoms or develop workarounds to keep things just stable enough to not get fired?

Yeah, but…

Some IT folks have the integrity to do things in the best interest of their clients despite this not being in their own financial interests. Unfortunately, I have seen too many of the former and very few of the latter, so the odds are high your “IT Guy” could be taking advantage of you. Perhaps this isn’t even a conscious decision, but simply the cause and effect of being rewarded to maintain the status-quo. The other reason is they simply lack the knowledge and experience to manage things in a better way.

Taking a deeper look at the problem…

Let’s examine the usual case: You hire someone who is inexpensive and eager to grow their skillset. Their only experience is building a PC or two and setting up the family’s home network. They know just enough to be dangerous, but they have more knowledge with IT than you do. You decide to give them a try. Your company’s network has now become their personal IT playground. He/she will happily persuade you to try new things in your environment. Let’s consider when this “new thing” is the backup system for your important documents and company QuickBooks files. He tells you the system can be implemented with minimal cost because the software is “free” (perhaps Open-Source Linux or something) and you happen to have an old PC that can be repurposed to host the system. What could go wrong?!

Well, let’s list a few potential issues:

Due to inexperience, the tech didn’t ask or know where all the critical data resides and failed to include the QuickBooks files in the backups. The QuickBooks PC dies and there are no backups.
The single drive in the backup server starts failing, but the condition is not known because nothing is monitoring the performance of the hardware. Your primary application server crashes and there are no good backups (due to the failing hard drive) because your tech never tested restoring the data.
A flood in the IT closet destroys both the server and the backup system resulting in total data loss – and there is no off-site copy.
One of your employees clicks an email link, unleashing a ransomware attack on your network and because their account had admin privileges on the network, the server and backup files are also encrypted, resulting in total data loss.
Your main server crashes and it takes a week for your tech to source new hardware, rebuild the server from scratch, and then restore your data from the backup. Everything worked as designed, but your tech didn’t consider how long your company could be down while everything was being rebuilt. Your business just lost a week of productivity.

Truth or Consequences?

We wish we could say these horror stories are complete fabrications, but you would be surprised (or maybe not) at the many ticking time bombs we have come across. To be sure, we won’t name names here, but trust us when we say, “We have seen it all!” The fortunate ones are those who made the switch to more professional IT management before things went south. It would not be a bad idea to quiz “your guy” about what measures are in place to ensure these things don’t happen. You’ll likely get one of two reactions – a smile (with a laundry-list of precautions being taken) or sweat (with a ton of excuses)! You be the judge. And this pop-quiz of sorts doesn’t require being technical…it is easy to read whether someone is confident and knows what they are saying or trying to talk you in circles to avoid answering the question. Reminds me of final exam essay questions where you don’t know the answer, but hope you can write enough to eventually touch on the correct response.

In any of these scenarios, your company will have paid a hefty price for the inexperience of your IT guy. Important lessons were learned by both parties. Your business has just become aware of the need to be more operationally mature, and your IT guy knows what not to do next time. Layer on top of the operational issues, the constantly evolving need for better security, and the problems become even more complex and the risk to your organization that much greater.

Oh, but he is an employee, so there’s more…

Here are some other limitations of having a single resource (perhaps your employee) running IT:

Who fixes problems when he/she is on vacation or out sick?
Where is the escalation path when issues are outside of your tech’s skillset?
You hired them at a low salary, but now they have experience and a resume (at your company’s expense), and they leave you to make 50% higher salary elsewhere.
Your IT needs have grown, and you need: a desktop technician, a network/server admin, and an IT Director. Even if there is overlap in the technical competencies, now you are spending $200K+ (over $16K per month) to hire and retain competent technology staff.

Take note that many of these problems are also inherent in outsourcing IT to a single-guy shop whether the agreement is structured as break/fix (with the problems discussed above) or fixed-fee.

Managed Service Providers to the rescue!

We have looked at why the break/fix model doesn’t work for many organizations AND why hiring IT staff has serious limitations. There is a sweet spot in Small Business where the MSP model thrives – higher OML organizations who value quality IT services but cannot afford to staff a full IT department.

MSPs operate with fixed-fee monthly services and provide outsourced IT resources for your business. They staff experienced technology professionals who fill the various roles of an IT department. MSPs provide best-of-breed tools to monitor and manage your systems, all-you-can-eat help desk support, and even strategic IT management (usually with a virtual CIO service serving as your IT Director).

Managed Service Providers buffer your organization from the challenges of hiring and retaining quality staff, plus provide redundancies in various technical competencies. MSPs can offer technology talent a better compensation package: 401K, flexible PTO, career tracks with promotions, training programs, performance pay, and other benefits. And the employee doesn’t have the stress of being on an island with no other technical resources to help when needed. They are part of a team.

Win-Win

All of this and the MSP’s interests are aligned with the needs of your organization. A fixed-fee monthly contract means both companies benefit when technology is stable and end-users are productive and happy. This is a win-win since the cost of outsourcing support is less than staffing an IT department. So, to answer the question, “When is an IT guy not enough?”: When your organization values the benefits of well-managed technology, but it is not practical to staff your own IT department.

Posts

The Five Flaws of the Break-Fix Approach to IT