J.C. Braga serves as controller for Mr. Z’s Fund Raising Corp., a Port Washington-based fundraising company. Braga also is in charge of the information technology (IT) department.
In the past, Braga outsourced to a third-party IT company that charged hourly rates. The company did a great job, but the time they would spend at the company was unpredictable and could become a burden for a smaller company like Mr. Z’s.
Braga recently switched his strategy to work with AccountablIT LLC, a West Bend-based managed service IT company that charges a flat monthly rate for services.
“For me to work on some troubleshooting, setting up an e-mail account or working on an issue with a computer would take me two to three hours without the expertise of these guys,” Braga said. “My time is more valuable doing financials and other duties that can benefit the company.”
Braga pays a monthly fee to AccountablIT for infrastructure planning, network monitoring and troubleshooting, routine scheduled maintenance tasks and meetings to review service reports and network infrastructure diagramming.
Jason Seymour and Gary Blawat founded AccountablIT last December after serving as IT salespeople for various companies.
“We looked at the processes and services delivered by some third-party companies, and it was chaos,” Seymour said. “Companies would never know what they were going to be billed and when they looked at their current policies, had no idea what they were getting for $7,000 a month.”
“We found that for customers like controllers and lawyers, the cost was so unpredictable that if they could not address something themselves, they would just live with the problem,” Blawat said. “We have met people who could not print for six months or that bought their secretary a new computer but could not get Excel to work. They couldn’t gauge how long it would take and did not want to spend $125 per hour to get it fixed.”
Seymour and Blawat founded AccountablIT as a managed services company that can serve any role from a maintenance service to managed services and IT partner for a company, Seymour said.
For customers, they are targeting small to mid-sized businesses without IT staffs for customers.
“We have an IT expertise that we can apply toward a business that wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford,” Seymour said.
Not only is the monthly service affordable, but it is helping Braga to manage his costs. Instead of the normal third-party IT company coming in, assessing the problems within the infrastructure and pressuring a company to make all of the changes at once, AccountablIT is creating a five month plan with Mr. Z’s and fixing issues within the network on a priority and fund-conscious basis.
“It is like having an IT department right within the company,” Braga said.
And if there is an emergency, AccountablIT is on call to help fix the problem. The cost of the emergency visit is included in the monthly fee, so AccountablIT is better off getting everything right the first time and in an efficient amount of time. If they don’t, it is a cost to AccountablIT and not the customer, Seymour said.
The emergency is also fixed in a shorter period of time because AccountablIT is familiar with the infrastructure and will not take hours to figure the system out before solving a problem.
AccountablIT offers a few tiers of service but can help a company with IT issues at any level at any time. Price is determined by the level of service, the complexity of the device or infrastructure and the size of the environment that AccountablIT would be managing.
A small to medium-sized business with less than 20 employees could pay a base rate of $100 per month for a simple monitoring contract, which includes a review of the company infrastructure and the monitoring of issues. If a problem arose, the company could pay an extra fee for AccountablIT to service the problem or call a third-party company of their choice to take care of it.
A managed contract, in which the customer pays a monthly fee that includes monitoring, maintenance and management for the same-sized company could cost about $1,200 per month, depending on the number of devices.
That cost pales in comparison with the costs for a company to hire its own technology staffer for $60,000 per year, Seymour said.
As their company grows, Seymour and Blawat plan to keep their customer-focused business model and help business owners see their infrastructure from all angles instead of just one problem with one solution.
“The managed services are excellent, but I like knowing someone with their expertise is going to come, take the time to finish a project and I am not charged per hour,” Braga said.
Metrix LLC
Metrix LLC, Waukesha, partnered with 360 Technologies, Nottingham, England, to provide Metrix Advanced Scheduling solution. Metrix Advanced Scheduling is a real-time solution focused on getting the right resources to the right places on time at the lowest total cost. Metrix Advanced Scheduling can instantly recalculate and update schedules as variables change. GPS tracking of resources in the field for street-level routing, time-of-day travel calculations and turn-by-turn directions. Designed for same-day optimization and performance-based service level agreements (SLA) of 4, 2 or 1 hour response times, the architecture scales across multiple servers to deliver true real-time scheduling for 50 to more than 10,000 users.
Olympus America Inc., Center Valley, Pa., deployed Metrix Mobile Techlink to more than field technicians in its Medical Systems business. Olympus is using Metrix Mobile Techlink to streamline and automate business processes associated with performing service on the endoscopic equipment in use at customer locations. In addition to the Metrix Mobile Techlink deployment, Olympus uses Metrix software in its imaging and diagnostic Systems businesses as well.
RedPrairie Corp.
RedPrairie Corp., Waukesha, received two awards of excellence from the Society for Technical Communication (STC), Arlington, Va., for its online help systems. RedPrairie’s winning publications, DLx Labor Online Warehouse Map Setup and Maintenance Guide and DLx Transportation Online Help, were recognized in Minneapolis at the STC Twin Cities Chapter Technical Publication Competition awards ceremony. STC is a professional association that advances the arts and sciences of technical communication.
AQS Inc.
AQS Inc., Hartland, signed a licensing agreement with Michigan Millers Mutual Insurance Co., Lansing, Mich., to provide Michigan Millers and its agents with AQS/advantage. The AQS/advantage components licensed include AQS’ policy administration system (PAS) and AQS/advantage Integrator, a backend administrator tool used to monitor the ETL process that provides success and failure notifications from the client’s backend systems. Michigan Millers underwrites auto, homeowners, agribusiness insurance and a full range of property and casualty coverage for small and midsize businesses.
AccountablIT LLC
AccountablIT LLC, West Bend, partnered with LPI Level Platforms Inc., Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, that allows AccountablIT to offer Level Platform’s tools to businesses in southeastern Wisconsin. Level Platforms developed a set of tools to provide updated and pre-analyzed information on customer networks. By monitoring a customer’s environment for symptoms of potential issues, Level Platforms assists in the diagnosis and prevention of potentially crippling IT problems in the future.
