Dec
22

What is Flat Fee IT?

One of the central parts of our service is the idea of flat fee IT.  Usually the first question I get from someone unfamiliar with TechMD is: what does flat fee IT mean?  Or, how does it work?  Why do you do it?  I thought I would take a couple of minutes today to talk about why we’ve chosen a flat fee approach for serving our clients.

The traditional approach to IT support is called the “time and materials” model.  Your computer breaks. You call your IT guy.  He comes to your office to fix it and sends you a bill for his time.  The problem with this model is that there is no incentive for the IT guy to fix your problems quickly or correctly the first time.  The more problems you have, the more money he makes.  He also has no incentive to be proactive or preventative with your system.  It’s in his best interest for you to have an unstable system that goes down often.  That’s more money in his pocket.

We realized that there must be a better way to go about this.  So, the founders of TechMD started providing our clients with unlimited service for a flat fee each month.  Based on the size of our clients’ system, we figure out one monthly fee that covers everything.  Sally needs a new printer installed?  Covered.  Antivirus?  Included.  24/7 monitoring of your system?  Absolutely.  Your CEO wants to talk IT strategy?  No problem.

This structure puts the incentive on us to make sure your systems are running as efficiently as possible.  The less downtime you have, the better it is for you, and for us.  It pushes us to train our technicians well, not just in working with systems but in working with individuals users.  It also allows us to be proactive, without our clients needing to watch the clock while we work.  We can monitor your systems 24 hours a day, fix issues the moment they come up, and go above and beyond to fix our clients’ problems.  And you can set your IT budget for the year and forget about it.

It turns our relationships with our clients from a vendor relationship to a true partnership.

Have a question about flat fee IT that I didn’t answer?  Give us a call or email us at info@techmd.com

One Comment on What is Flat Fee IT?

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