How tech42 Became Scranton’s Top IT Services Company

Over the past decade, tech42 has developed from a small startup to a leading IT services company in Scranton. Doing so required our team to recognize what clients needed most and then deliver an undeniably high quality of service.

Micheal Pickreign was worried about the future of his business.

It’s 2010. He’s just launched tech42, an IT support company in Pennsylvania.

He’s confident he and his team have the skills and experience necessary to solve clients’ IT problems, but he doesn’t have a company-wide strategy for how to do so.

“I would call it the ‘Wild West’,” says Michael. “We were all over the board with no consistency in our offering. We would do anything for a buck.”

This isn’t uncommon for service-based startups, no matter what industry they’re a part of. In need of clients and revenue, they do anything and everything to build their business.

They don’t know when to say “no” to a client, if at all. They lack focus and strategy.

Around that time, this was a particularly big issue in the IT support world. Almost everyone in the market was offering the same type of support…

The Big Problem With “Break/Fix” IT Support

“At that time, we were predominantly break/fix,” says Michael. “No real contracts, just ad-hoc work.”

Not too long ago, all IT support was essentially reactive, just like tech42’s. These services were either called “hourly” support, or maybe “break/fix”, but that’s a bit of an industry term.

In either case, the way these services worked was that you brought in your hardware, or called a technician to visit you on site after something went wrong. Even in the best of cases, you still had to deal with the downtime that occurred while you waited for your broken IT to get fixed.

This model of support lead to a range of chronic issues for clients:

  • A break/fix company typically charges by the hour. This encourages them to focus on billable hours. Clients could find themselves repeatedly calling for help with a problem that never quite gets resolved.
  • It could take days to fix a problem. In the meantime, employees don’t have access to the data or tools they need to continue working. The client is simply “bleeding money” by the minute.
  • It’s impossible to predict how much to budget for IT services. The client can’t know what will happen or how expensive it might be.

For Michael and tech42, these issues with their support model meant they were just bouncing from one client to the next. There was no strategy to their service offering.

They just looked for people who needed an isolated IT problem solved, and then solved it for them. The hope was that this would generate enough business to keep them profitable.

But this would only last for so long. Eventually, Michael knew he had to make a change.

That’s When tech42 Revolutionized Their Scranton IT Services

Michael saw the writing on the wall — clients wanted more focused support, more predictable IT support expenses, and more lasting solutions to their problems.

That’s when Michael transitioned tech42 to offering fully managed IT support services. This type of business is known in the industry as a “Managed Services Provider” (MSP).

Managed IT services are a set of best practices, processes, and tools that, when combined with technical knowledge and proper facilitation, delivers an ideal IT-based result for clients.

In other words, managed IT services take care of everything IT-related for the client’s organization, proactively preventing problems instead of fixing them after the fact.

The point is that managed IT services address the core issue of the break/fix model. Instead of waiting for something to go wrong and then stepping in to correct it, tech42 began taking on all the responsibilities of a traditional in-house IT department for their clients.

This means working to prevent issues from happening in the first place. It’s a much more effective approach, which is why managed IT services are now more popular than ever.

For many businesses, the cost of hiring even a single internal IT person is too expensive. They need a salary, training, benefits, vacation — it’s a lot to budget for. That’s not to mention that, while the internal IT manager is on vacation, someone has to cover for them, which means the client either pays for expertise again, or has someone unqualified fill in on a temporary basis.

By offering a patently superior model of IT support, tech42 quickly became Scranton’s top IT services company.

tech42’s Scranton IT Services Include Hardware-as-a-Service

Similar to the fully managed approach to IT support, Michael also developed a service to help tech42’s clients enjoy a more seamless and efficient user-experience with their hardware.

Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS) is a service provision model for equipment. In simple terms, it’s similar to licensing or leasing, covering all the hardware you could need.

Instead of having to purchase your equipment outright, you get tech42 to install the equipment for you, and you rent it from them on an ongoing basis. Each party will enter into a service level agreement (SLA) which defines each party’s responsibilities.

The best part?

If the hardware becomes outdated or breaks down, the responsibility for repairs or replacement then falls to tech42. When the device gets replaced, the decommissioning process begins.

The key budgetary benefit of this service model is that you no longer have to invest capital in hardware. That funding gets freed up to be used in other areas of your business.

Instead, your hardware, along with any other services provided by tech42, fall under operating expenses, meaning you get an immediate, month by month return on the small flat rate you’re paying.

Evolving Their Approach To Support Made tech42 Scranton’s Top IT Services Company

Thanks to Michael’s diligent work in developing a truly beneficial service offering, his clients get better service than ever before, and as a result, tech42 is thriving.

“Our customer satisfaction levels have been significantly higher among our MS/HaaS customers than any of our other clients currently or historically,” says Michael.

If you’re interested in seeing what tech42’s managed services or HaaS will do for you, the process is simple:

  1. Book a meeting with our team.
  2. Tell us about your IT problems, and what you’re looking for in Scranton IT services.
  3. Enjoy a fully managed IT support experience.