There are at least a dozen IT mistakes that business owners commonly make. In an effort to highlight and explain some of these follies, we are starting a series of three blog posts on the subject.

This post should provide some insight into the first three types of mistakes that should be avoided (warranties, consumer grade vs. commercial grade and software).

 

1. Letting Your Manufacturer Warranty Expire

This is one time when you want to pay attention to the fine print of your warranty. Critical hardware like your server needs to be under the manufacturer’s warranty, which is typically three years. You can oftentimes buy a warranty extension, which keeps you covered for five years. You should buy the extension… Why? Let’s use an example to explain.

Two business owners; both have a Dell server; one is under warranty the other isn’t. Today, a part in both servers fails.

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We plan to occasionally use this platform to spotlight our customers—hopefully in a way that goes beyond story telling to providing practical advice and actionable steps for business owners with similar IT challenges and needs. Providing your aha! IT moment of the week, if you will.

We’ll start with Tennessee Electric Cooperative Association (TECA), a Concept Technology client since 2009.

In 2009 TECA had reached a turning point: The association had outgrown its current IT provider and was considering hiring a full-time internal IT staffer.

TECA’s problems in 2009 stemmed from the fact that they were using the same vendor for their phones and computers. Consolidating services saves money, right? Not unless your vendor is an expert in all the services it provides.

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