Changes Effective July 1, 2011

Swall’s Associated Services would like to thank you for the opportunity to service your technology needs for the past years.  I have been truly honored to have you as a client and as a friend.

In the ten years that have passed since Swall’s Associated Services’ inception we have gone through many phases.  We started out just like most other IT Service providers of the day utilizing the break/fix service model.  During our many years of providing services to our clients in this fashion I have often felt that there must be a better way.  Having our clients – people I often consider as personal friends, experience downtime, outages and other business pains that could have been prevented (as opposed to fixed after the fact) always really bothered me.  I didn’t want to see our clients go through these horrible events in the first place.  Business stoppages, backups lost with important business data or family photos never to be recovered again – as much as I enjoyed getting to be the IT hero of the day, I would get equally depressed when I had to be the bearer of bad news when I knew that in the aftermath that there was important data lost, never to be recovered again.

I never got to truly be a partner to our clients that I wanted to be.  The depressing fact is that in the break/fix service model the more pain our clients felt the more money we made as it was in times of crisis that our services were needed the most.  Our economic stability was tied to our clients having more problems, not less.  This bothered me so much that at one point I even considered closing up shop and stepping away from the business to find something more personally fulfilling.  This was never a viable answer to me however as this would do nothing to address this problem for my clients – in my absence another IT service provider would simply take our place using the same, flawed business model.  I needed to find a solution that would benefit not only me personally, but our clients too. 

What I needed was to find a business model that allowed me to truly partner with our clients.  A new business model where my business only succeeded when our clients succeeded and equally caused my business pain when theirs was in pain.  I needed a revolution – a way of doing business so utterly unique and different than our previous model that a name change was in order…

Introducing Swall’s Business Consultants

I have spent the last year on a personal and professional journey to find a better way to partner with our clients.  I have met with various business owners, attended many workshops, read several books and all have led me to the same conclusion:  The break/fix service model should be a thing of the past – there is a better way. 

Here is what I learned about my business and how our business model needed to change to become a true partner to our clients and give each and every one of them the most value:

1. Stop charging by the hour – no one likes that.  Over the past fifteen years we have moved from paying 25 cents a minute for long distance on your home telephone to having unlimited mobile to mobile calling from anywhere to anywhere on our mobile phone.  Why shouldn’t IT be the same way?   An easy-to-budget flat rate each and every month for unlimited support.
   
2. Stop waiting until a problem happens to fix it – prevent the problem from occurring in the first place.  Now can every problem be prevented?  No, of course not – but many problems can be if they are caught early enough.  In the ten years we have been in business many advances in remote monitoring and reporting technologies allow us to know a problem exists before you even do.  Wouldn’t it be much nicer to get a call in the morning saying “We noticed your e-mail went out in the middle of the night last night so we got it fixed for you before you got into the office” instead of showing up first thing in the morning and realizing you have no communication with the outside world?
   
3. No one has time to manage their technology – managing their business itself is already demanding enough.  I agree.  All anyone ever really wants is everything to work when they need it to and one throat to choke when it doesn’t, right?  That’s why we don’t just manage your computers; we also manage your copiers, your phone system, even your wireless carrier so that when anything goes wrong with the technology in your office you only have to remember one phone number – ours.  Let us know what’s going on and then it becomes our problem to follow-up on and is off your plate so you can get back to managing your business.
   
4. Everyone hates buying computers, especially when everyone knows they are just going to need to be replaced again in a few years.  I totally agree – so don’t buy them.  Computers are a horrible investment.  You have to spend all this money on the hardware, then the software, then you can’t even take the purchase off this year’s taxes – you have to depreciate it over several years.  By the time you finally get to deduct the purchase price of your computer you already have to buy another one to replace it!  That’s why we include whatever computers or servers you need as part of our flat monthly fee – which turns your bad capital investment into a much more manageable operational expense that’s fully tax deductible each and every month.

Taking these lessons into account I realized I wasn’t simply looking at needing to design a new service model, but a completely new way of doing business.  Something so drastically different than before that our company name itself no longer expressed who we were as a company.  In that revelation a new company was born – Swall’s Business Consultants.

The Flat-Rate Revolution Is Here!

Swall’s Business Consultants is excited to announce our new service model and offering, IT Concierge, which will allow a more pro-active response to your technology needs and additional benefits and services to help you run your business. 

Just a few of these benefits include:

How will this affect your current relationship with Swall’s Associated Services?

As of July 1, 2011 Swall’s Associated Services will begin slowly phasing out the break/fix service model your company is currently utilizing.  This includes the discontinuance of all discount pricing and pre-paid agreements.  In addition, our break/fix hourly rates will increase to $125 per hour due to the increases in material, labor and operating costs brought about by the inefficiencies of the break/fix model and will continue to increase on a quarterly basis.  We will however offer a 5% prompt payment discount for invoices paid within 10 days of issuance and a 10% discount for signing up for automatic billing using your credit card or checking account.

Please call me to discuss the opportunity to convert all your existing agreements over to our new service model, IT Concierge.  There are many new discounts and benefits you are eligible for by converting.  With IT Concierge, you will enjoy all of the benefits you are already accustom to plus the additional service listed above with the ease of proactive, well planned services at your fingertips.  You manage your business, and we’ll manage the technology behind it.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to services your technology needs.  We are excited to introduce and offer you the newest concept of IT Management.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at 310-782-6112 x11.

Sincerely,

Justin Swall
President
Swall’s Business Consultants