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& Announcements
I don’t know if you’ve seen the latest Steven Spielberg movie “Super 8” yet, but if you have, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that the train wreck scene in that movie probably has to be one of the most epic crashes ever put on film. I think I have an idea why that crash is such a memorable scene, and if you’ll indulge me for a second, I’ll give you my theory [...]
(READ MORE)Times have certainly been challenging these past couple of years. Many companies have found themselves stuck in the doldrums, fighting to survive. For some, the strategy is to “hunker down”, tighten the grip on the wallet and try to simply ride the tough times out. But I believe there’s another option. I believe companies can [...]
(READ MORE)Recent events should be serving as a reminder to each one of us that disasters never visit us on any sort of schedule. Disaster Recovery planning is never really done, and it’s not the kind of thing that should be looked at once and then put away. Our approach is simple, we start at the [...]
(READ MORE)System Management
Relax - it's covered
Complexity is a fact of life in much of what we deal with today. Go lift the hood on any new car and try to identify the main components of the system. Would you dare dive in there with a crescent wrench to try to fix something? Probably not. You take your car to a shop that has trained technicians who can insure that everything runs smoothly so you don’t have to worry about being stranded on the side of the road. Should your computer systems be handled any differently? We don’t think so. At Applied Integration, there are only highly experienced, well trained Technicians who take great pride in what they do. And in the hands of those Technicians are some of the most sophisticated tools available today for System Management. Under our System Management umbrella, we follow a carefully structured set of Industry Best Practices to insure that systems are properly updated, maintained and secured. We implement strong Disaster Recovery steps so that we’re prepared for the “worst case scenario”.But my local guy is "local"...
In the past, there was some comfort that came from knowing the "computer guy" was just an hour or so away. Give him a call in the morning and by that afternoon he might be on-site working the problem. These days we do it quite differently. Once we implement our tool set into your systems, we're effectively on-site all the time. Have a problem with one of the PCs? We connect directly to that machine with a quick click of the mouse, already solving the problem before a local guy could even be starting the car. And better yet, with proper maintenance of your systems, we head off a lot of the problems before they even happen. We have customers who are just down the street, as well as customers who are clear across the country. Just ask them; we are able to service all of them well. In today’s world, effective System Management does not require a fleet of trucks ready to roll to your location. We can be far more responsive (like, RIGHT NOW!) with the tools we’ll put in place. And if it does make sense to have some local assistance, we’ve got national agreements with local on-site service organizations to partner on those rare occurrences. You’ll find there's much more comfort in getting problems solved immediately than in having a local guy driving to your location every time something needs to be done.A Disciplined Approach to Success
It takes discipline to do it right, but we believe that it is faster to take that little bit of extra time required to do it right the first time than to come back later and do it again. As we work on the systems we support, every action and/or change is documented. We can always look back and see the work we did, when we did it. Do you use third party software for estimating, contact management, etc and struggle to keep everyone updated to the current version? We've got processes to let us audit systems, identify the installed applications and then effectively distribute and perform the ongoing updates. Everything we do is based around the simple rules that things need to be done right the first time with the proper documentation done as we go. All our Technicians share common access to critical information about your configurations, so you're never at the mercy of that one person who knows anything about your system. When we do identify a problem that comes up, we document it thoroughly in our Knowledge Base. This means that our entire support organization has access to every solution; this helps us achieve the fastest resolution possible for just about anything that can go wrong. A good portion of our Knowledge Base is also available to our customers, for those who prefer to solve their own minor problems.
