The HelpDesk Company Blog

To say that May has been an incredible month here at The HelpDesk Company would be an understatement.  We added a new member to our team (see article below); welcomed a new client; and received three HUGE compliments - from our industry, our peers, and most significantly from our clients! First, please join us in welcoming our newest client - the Kuehl Shephard Koslowski Group.  We are thrilled to be working with them. On May 13th, we were recognized by the Greater Richmond Technology Council as a finalist for their 14th Annual Technology Builder Award.  Although we did not win, it was an incredible experience to be recognized as a leader in our industry in front of 400 area business and technology professionals. I also learned this month that I’ve been selected as a finalist for Member of the Year for our local chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).  This is an incredible honor as I know just how wonderful and generous our members are.  A huge THANK YOU to all of my fellow NAWBO ladies! The crowning jewel for this month, however, came from a long-time client, the Richmond SPCA.  They recently asked me to conduct a training session on Customer Service for their staff members.  I was happy to lead the two sessions last week and enjoyed talking with approximately 50 staff members from the many departments at the SPCA (yes, it takes a lot of folks to lead a top-rated animal shelter).  However, they sent me over the moon when they shared that the two other companies they were having speak on customer service this year were The Jefferson and Ukrops.  WOW!!! We hope that you agree with the SPCA’s opinion and encourage you to let us know if you don’t.  It’s hard to resolve an issue when you don’t realize it exists. Thank you to each and every one of you.  Our clients, business partners, and friends.  I know the past year has been tough for many and I hope that all of you experience a month like we have to let you know that you’re on the right path. 

The big Awards Gala was this week.  It was an overwhelming event.  I loved the generous time for networking during the “cocktail hour” before we were seated for dinner - met a few new folks and caught up with some old friends.  We were joined at our table by Rob Mercer (Virginia Asset Management) and Jonathan Young & Dr. Gymama Slaughter (Virginia State University) and were surrounded by many friends - Karen & Josh Cole of Assura, Inc., Genevieve Roberts & Lee Weisiger of The Titan Group, Christina Morgan of PMI CVC, Jim Staley of T-Mobile, and I could go on and on.  Although we did not win the Technology Builder Award (it went to Dominion Digital), it was an incredible experience to see our name on the big screen as our company profile was read to the approximately 400 folks in attendance!  We are looking forward to greater involvement with the Tech Council (which, by the way, is now called RichTech).  Also loved hearing about the incredible technical education programs that are available in so many of the area public school systems.  Can’t imagine what will be available by the time our children are in high school - we may need a tutor for Todd & me so we can help the kids with their homework! 

Within a period of just 10 days, two of our clients experienced server failures.  Typically, we deal with 1-2 server failures per quarter.  However, the fact that there were two server failures in such a short time period is not what’s so interesting.  What’s so interesting, and why I feel compelled to share this story with you, is the significant difference an inexpensive single business decision can make affecting revenue stream and employee productivity in real-time. Before you invest 60 seconds reading further, I want to keep from wasting your time. So, if your business can afford for your server to be offline for a few days, affecting your revenue stream and employee productivity, you do not need to read further – go ahead and delete this email. 

Okay, so your business can’t afford to be down… 

Client A was up and running within a few hours of their server failure while Client B was down for four days.  Why, you may ask, was Client A able to recover so quickly while Client B experienced thousands of dollars in lost productivity and additional labor costs (not to mention the lost revenue opportunity)?   The answer is simple.  Client A had worked with us an inexpensive Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity plan and Client B had not.  Client A was using Business Continuity Software that takes snapshots of their server every hour and features the ability to be restored to dissimilar loaner equipment.  Client B was using traditional nightly backup software. So, when Client A’s server failed, we grabbed our Loaner Server (we have 2) and headed to their office.  Within 1 hour, we had reimaged their old server to the dissimilar Loaner Server (right up to the last hour of data) and had the entire organization online generating revenue.  We then took their failed server back to the office where we could focus on it without being in Client A’s way. 

Since Client B still used the traditional nightly backup software (Symantec - incapable of quickly restoring to a different/dissimilar machine), we left the Loaner Server at the office and headed out to troubleshoot.  Unfortunately, the entire server needed to be replaced (victim of electrical surge during a thunderstorm), so we had to wait for the new one to ship out from the distributor and arrive at our office.  (Please note, servers cannot be purchased in town – they have to be purchased from Distributors). Four days later, Client B was back up and running. The good news was that we were able to perform a file copy from their nightly backup media to recover all of the data from the previous night’s backup and they now have Business Continuity Software in place. The bad news was the previous night’s backup was really 5 days old at this point and they lost 1 business days worth of data.  The really bad news was that Client B’s office had been without server access to their files, email, calendar and contacts for four days – unable to correspond with their suppliers, vendors and customers. Fact - Nightly backups routines using SBS Backup or Symantec will protect your data in the long run. You just need to decide how long your business can run without a server.  

Fact - We often think of a disaster as something catastrophic, when really it can be as simple as a motherboard failure, memory failure, hard drive failure, electrical surge or even water damage from an overflow or broken pipe.  You received this email because your organization cannot recover from a server hardware failure quickly. Your business should plan on taking days to recover their server data (shared files, email, calendars, contacts), lost revenue and lost communications between suppliers, vendors and customers just like Client B from above. If your business needs it’s server(s) online quickly and cannot afford for staff to sit around for days without computer access to shared files, email, calendars and contacts, I suggest you to call me so we can discuss getting this Business Continuity Software in place ASAP. The cost per server is a one-time setup fee of $250 for both the necessary hardware and software. The monthly recurring is just $50 per server.  Is $50 too much to pay to protect the organizations revenue stream and have your organization back up and running quickly?