If you walk into the newly refurbished ES Consulting building, watch out, you might just be in the cross fire of an employee Nerf war. Company culture is the number one priority at ES, and if the workers aren’t enjoying themselves, CEO Dennis Fox considers his job a failure.
“People spend as much time or sometimes even more with their work family than their actual family, so everyone should want to be here; it should never feel forced,” Fox said.
Let’s back up.
ES was founded in 2001 and with and the help of Fox the focused theme was to provide enterprise level service with a local mindset. That’s why their new headquarters on Park Ave. in Ontario was completely overhauled. You shouldn’t have to work in Columbus or Cleveland to have a state-of-the-art progressive facility centered on employee comfort and workflow.
ES Consulting is an Information Technology (IT) Solution Provider for businesses, typically referred to as a Managed Service Provider. That covers everything in a business from technology help desk to computer, server, or network projects, all the way up to acting as the CIO; helping you to make good technology decisions and budgets within your business speaking in terms you can understand. With a mindset centered on culture and relationships, ES is able to do this by being both proactive and accountable.
Other IT companies often follow traditional molds of IT service and usually follow regimented patterns. One method that is used in the IT industry is coined “break-fix”; where they only make money when you have problems. They aren’t concerned with long-term solutions or if your business benefits from technology, because the more issues you have, the more they profit.
Another popular method is the “preventative maintenance” company that will send their tech out and manually go through routine service, usually on a time block – no matter what. The problem is that all of your preventative tech issues could already have been addressed, but they still come out and charge you the flat rate, regardless of any actual work they performed (but they will look busy).
ES recognized that these methods definitely do not fit the proactive or relationship-based molds that they feel make a business relationship successful.
While these are common, what business owners need to be aware of is the IT Company that calls themselves Managed Service Providers and aren’t actually managing anything. They don’t have the staff, but instead are wholly trusting software to do it for them. Even worse, they may be outsourcing it to another company and don’t even know who it is that is in your business network.
With ES, it’s all about local, relatable people that you know and can meet doing all of the work for your business.
ES has a live help desk, so anyone in your company can call them directly for a solution to their issue. The help desk is staffed by fully trained employees, on-site, not via out of state or offshore call centers. As a result, they are able to work directly with employees solving any problems instead of creating a work-a-round or being passed to higher service tiers.
The real bread and butter of Managed Services is provided by the Network Operations Center at ES who continuously monitors for potential issues, with an emphasis on security problems that may happen down the road. The massive internal infrastructure at ES allows them to continuously oversee your IT security, network, servers, and workstations. If any issues arise, they can be instantly addressed before downtime hurts your business, often without you even knowing they had to do something to fix it!
“IT has to be proactive in order to be beneficial to a business” Fox said. “If you are waiting for something to go wrong, you are basically waiting for the engine in your car to blow up before changing the oil.”
The company culture at ES naturally transitions into how they work with their clients. It’s all about building true business partnerships and being “one” with the companies they serve.
“IT Support shouldn’t be trial-by-fire, or even frustrating. That’s why it is our personal goal to change the way you think about IT consulting, and letting a company you can trust handle it for you,” Fox said.
The right managed service provider will have a focus on “future thought,” where the plan is all about moving your company into the future, not simply to maintain your current situation.
It boils down to you keeping more of the money you make using technology. IT shouldn’t be viewed only as an expense, but a means to make your business more efficient, productive and profitable. If your IT setup feels like a burden, then the strategy needs to be changed.
