A lot of companies, especially the small to mid-sized firms, don’t see the value in having dedicated tech support. To many, IT is a cost centre with no measurable ROI. Instead, they have someone on the inside who has “a pretty good feel” for computer issues. This is the person who does the setups, handles little email issues, and isn’t afraid to reboot a router or wireless device.

The difficulty is that these same people, while valuable, also don’t have the same exposure to news and goings on that IT professionals have. And here’s a classic example of why this can cripple your business…

A good example of this related to a recent news story about a particular Microsoft patch. Of course, most of you know that every month Microsoft will push out patches and fixes for different issues, or sometimes just plain old updates.

This last month (February) saw the same thing; patches released, and millions of users worldwide downloading them and installing them. Only this time there was a difference.

Reports have been surfacing that one of the patches released this month has caused an unusual reaction in a fair number of Windows XP workstations…. the dreaded Blue Screen of Death, or BSOD. This issue is apparently ONLY happening with XP machines, not with Vista, Windows 7, or any of the server operating systems. However, considering XP is still the most widely used operating system, this is potentially a very serious matter.

The real problem here however is that this story didn’t make it to the mainstream media outlets. Which means that those firms who rely on internal resources for their IT support may not get this news.

This can be a big problem. Your IT provider should be staying on top of news, trends, and most especially issues like this one which can cause significant outages for staff. Which is really part and parcel of the underlying tenet to good tech support… manage matters so that your clients don’t have to. There should be no need for clients to be focusing on anything except their business. Managing IT should be the role of IT professionals, not the marketing person who happens to know more about computers than anyone else in the office.

So check with your IT person, and see if they had heard about this story. Or check with your IT support and see if they knew about it. And maybe it’s time to rethink having Bob from accounting as your IT support.