Sometimes we’re a great fit. Sometimes not.
One of our core values is candor, so we have no problem communicating that our approach isn’t for everyone. To get a 100% accurate answer we’d need to talk about your specific situation, but here are some good general signals.
When Emerald is a great fit.
Your IT staff is overwhelmed or leaving.
If you’ve got a small IT department—one to three people—and the most senior person is leaving, we’re a perfect fit. We’ve stepped in when a department shrank to just one person who then gave notice, and kept everything running completely smooth. If staff remain, we can discretely help you decide whether to keep them or transition to fully outsourced—and help oversee them through our ticketing systems and processes.
Your current IT is an internal employee with other job duties.
We see this so often—almost always the finance person, but it could be an office administrator or anyone else who gets “IT support” dumped on them. They Google and fix about 65% of the problems, and put up with the rest unless it’s critical. We love taking that burden away and hearing that employee sigh in relief as they resume their normal job duties.
You have a complex IT situation.
This is often where we get referred in. We do extremely well with clients who have a lot of complexity in their networks, including mixed servers, strange documentation, or unclear strategy—and we do really well fixing other providers’ messes. If your call with us starts with “we’re special because…” don’t worry, we’ve probably seen worse.
You care about information security.
We have a true internal culture that supports security. You won’t hear about us on the news using “Password123” as an admin password. We have a robust change management process to make sure all changes to client environments are made securely, and we use the latest technology to detect threats that get past protective measures, including log monitoring and event reviews.
Your organization has boards, partners, or complex ownership.
Very few of our clients are single-owner companies. Most have between three and five “partners” who act as executive decision makers—a public governing board, private family partnership, or investor ownership group. We do well with single owners too, but we have special diplomatic skills to navigate the approvals and reporting of complex governed organizations.
You have compliance requirements.
We do well in PCI, HIPAA, CJIS, and SOX environments.
Your phone system is dying or you’re paying too much for it.
We offer phone system (PBX) and carrier services on a limited basis for select situations. If you want to talk more about this, call us or get in contact.
When Emerald is not the best choice.
You’re just price shopping your existing IT company.
There are a lot of approaches to IT, and a lot of companies that provide it—all with different pricing and models. If your current provider is doing a decent job taking care of you, shopping around just to check you’re getting a good deal isn’t the best use of time.
You’ve been fired from a previous IT provider.
It may seem odd, but we check references from your previous IT provider and always ask the tough questions about why a relationship ended. We expect a relationship based on mutual respect, and we want to see a demonstrated history that a client will receive advice, even when it’s tough to hear.
You want Emerald to only be a fire department.
Sometimes we get asked to come on retainer just to be an escalation point for an existing IT department or another provider. We usually aren’t a great fit if your IT department is in constant chaos and you’re unwilling to make difficult decisions to adopt the practices we recommend. If we can’t share responsibility for the end result and how we get there, we won’t be a great fit.
You won’t renew maintenance agreements or license software properly.
If you don’t follow software EULA licensing terms, it’s a no-go. We do not budge on this and comply with all terms set by Microsoft, Adobe, and every other software vendor. If you refuse to properly pay for maintenance agreements on mission-critical software, we cannot help you if it breaks—we won’t become a safety net for refusing to pay vendors.
Think we might be a fit?
Call us at (352) 224-4288 or send a message and we’ll talk through your specific situation.