While doing a sales call on a new proposal recently I had the prospect question about the setup fee on our full service package and what it entails, since it is not an insignificant amount. I took my time to explain the nuances of the setup and everything it covers, and realized that a post may be in order to explain it in even more detail.

The reasons a setup fee is necessary for our contracts consist of:

• We offer flat-rate based support. We have to know your network is setup properly, up to our standard, and operational before we take over the IT responsibilities for your organization.
• We need to document the configuration of your network, machine serial numbers, and enter all the information into our management system and wiki.
• We can never assume that just because you used an IT company in the past that anything was done correctly. We’ve walked into too many networks with massive issues that were ignored or caused by previous IT firms. There are times that it has been so bad that we’ve had to do a pre-onboarding project to bring the client even close to our standard.
• Setting up our management agents, configuring the patch management and monitoring takes a fair amount of time.
• Configuring and setting up the appropriate group policies and scripts to make sure that all machines are on the same settings and shares and printers automatically map. Our goal is to make sure any new system brought on requires as little manual configuration as possible.
• Setup and configure the antivirus software for your network, including policies, monitoring, report generation.
• Setup and configuration of your backups, making sure they are automated, monitored, and functional. We have yet to have a customer data loss event and intend to keep it that way.
• Setup and configure Postini for your domain.
• Setup and configure your network security with the AccessEnforcer firewall.

We are here to partner with our customers, and to make sure that their IT needs are taken care of 100% once they bring us in to manage their network. Once we get them up and running they are often surprised at how much we can automated and monitor to make sure things stay at their peak efficiency.
We want to be your company’s IT partner as well, and would relish the chance to come in and discuss how our support packages can give you more time to focus on your business, by focusing less on your IT issues.