Managed IT Services for the Tri-Cities: What Local Businesses Should Expect

Bristol, Kingsport, and Johnson City. Three cities bound together in one community we've come to call the Tri-Cities. There are other tri-cities in the United States (and the rest of the world for that matter), but this one is ours.

Like any community, the Tri-Cities faces its own unique challenges: How does Eastman's well-being impact the greater Kingsport economy? How does Ballad Health's monopoly on local healthcare affect our quality of health? How do Bristol, Virginia's economic struggles affect Bristol, Tennessee?

These are all valid concerns, and worthy topics for blogs more focused on those industries. However, we are an IT company, so our focus is on information technology and how it impacts all aspects of our lives. As a business IT managed services provider (or MSP), our focus is on providing practical, secure IT results to our clients here in the Tri-Cities and the surrounding region (see our service area page for more details), but what are those results? And what do they mean for your business?

What Burk I.T. Actually Does for Our Clients

The simplest way to describe what Burk does is to think of us as an IT department for your business that just happens to work outside your building. This begs a few questions from prospective clients:

• If we pay you to fix IT problems, wouldn't you want us to have more IT problems?

• Why not use our own IT department? Wouldn't they know our business better?

• What if we don't need that level of IT support?

These are great questions for any MSP, and as an individual who used to have these questions when I first started working at Burk, I believe I am uniquely qualified to answer them. Let's take each of these one at a time:

If we pay you to fix IT problems, wouldn't you want us to have more IT problems?

For Burk I.T., the answer is absolutely not, and there are good, mutually beneficial reasons why. For other MSPs, that is not always the case, but I'll explain Burk's policy first.

We offer varying levels of managed service packages (more on those later), and with the exception of our entry-level offering, they all include full 8am to 5pm remote support. That means that no matter how many things go wrong, how many things break, how many possible IT issues there are, as long as they happen during normal business hours (or at least are fixed during normal business hours) and are solved remotely, our clients do not pay any extra. Our professional package even includes on-site support, giving those clients even more value.

Basically, we are not incentivized to have our clients constantly bogged down with IT issues. They pay us the same amount monthly regardless of how many times they call the support desk, so we actually stand to lose profit when clients need to call in. Our policy is that clients are paying for uptime. We use a wide variety of monitoring and cybersecurity tools designed to prevent and mitigate IT problems.

Many other IT providers operate on a “break, fix” model, meaning that they charge their clients based on the work they do for them. Typically, this comes in the form of selling block hours each month, where clients are allotted a certain amount of time that the provider will work on IT issues. Beyond the allotted hours, clients end up getting charged extra, or in extreme circumstances, refused service. We believe that this model fails to incentivize success for the client. If you’re only paid to fix downtime, wouldn’t you want more downtime?

This is not us accusing our competitors of sabotage, this is merely a difference in business practices. They succeed when their customers need support; we succeed when our clients succeed.

Why not use our own IT department? Wouldn't they know our business better?

This question is operating off the assumption that a business already has an IT department, but many of our clients don't have any dedicated IT staff. It doesn't make economic sense for every business to staff IT professionals, so a lot of our business is dedicated to providing IT support to those smaller businesses. However, that is not our entire business model.

Many of our clients do have IT departments, or at least one IT person on their staff. This is not a problem for us; we just act as a supplemental technical resource for these clients. IT support can be a very demanding task for one or two employees, especially if a client has hundreds of employees. With all our tools limiting the amount of IT support desk work needed, and our support desk handling the calls that do come in, our clients' IT employees are freed up to work on the business.

The IT people that work for our clients are not supplanted, they are supported. Plus, from our perspective, it can be very helpful to have an internal technical resource who can help translate IT issues that may be unique to a given client. It's another win-win.

Granted, managed services are not for every business. Take the aforementioned Eastman; they are a large enough company that their IT department is likely larger than our entire company. However, for the vast majority of businesses in the region, Burk I.T. can be as much of a clients' IT department as they need.

What if we don't need that level of IT support?

If your business truly does not need modern IT support, I genuinely hope you're an Amish baker who’s been gifted a printed version of this blog. I'm joking to an extent, but IT is intertwined with so many aspects of modern life, it is difficult to conceive of a business that does not need some level of professional IT support.

Not every business does need the highest-level managed services package we offer, but that's the reason we have different levels of IT support. For the complete details on our packages, you would need to consult our sales team (call 423.578.8000 today!), but suffice to say that while the more expensive packages do provide more (and naturally we do think that the professional package does provide the most comprehensive IT services available), not everybody needs that, especially if you are a smaller, growing business.

We want to provide the IT support you need when you need it. If that means bringing you on as a client in the intro package today and moving you to the advanced package three years from now, that's great! We meet clients where they are and take them where they need to go.

Does Your Business Need Burk I.T.?

I can't objectively answer that question. However, for any small to medium sized businesses in and around the Tri-Cities who are unhappy with their information technology situation, I hope you consider Burk I.T. as a possible solution.

We offer a free, non-committal consultation, so you can see exactly what we believe your business needs, and what we intend to do for your business.