On site support from AccuTech International

On-site IT support is the ability of an organization or company to have physically-present IT technicians at the work or job site. When PCs go down, when printers break, when network hardware malfunctions, an IT support person can diagnose the problem and find the lowest-cost solution to the performance issue. IT technicians can also diagnose problems with software applications, provide basic user training in how to interact with the corporate computer systems, and generally troubleshoot user issues with the hardware or software at the business location.

For large corporations with corporate campuses or major office complexes, on-site support is often the most cost-effective option. The company can maintain a central IT support office, and dispatch technicians to whichever office or building is reporting a problem. Microsoft is an example of a corporation which uses this model for on-site support. Employees at the company’s Redmond office complex can submit IT help desk requests, and where the intervention of an on-site technician is called for, the technician is dispatched to the office reporting the problem, where he or she works on the issue until it is resolved.

Small companies are often able to have on-site IT support by the expedient of having a single IT person, or a tiny group of IT people, on staff. This IT person is usually a jack-of-all-trades who ends up running hard to stay ahead of the wildly varying IT needs of the company.

Many companies, whether small one-man operations or huge corporations, find it expedient to outsource their IT support requirements. This saves them the expense of maintaining an IT department that may sit idle when there are no problems, while still retaining the ability to have a service person on-site quickly whenever a real problem arises. This model can require greater discipline on the part of company employees, to avoid the scenario of an expensive support call being ordered for a problem that turns out to be readily fixed by the employee themselves, such as a computer not being plugged in or a toner cartridge not being properly seated in a printer. Typically, such per-incident servicing costs more on a case-by-case basis than maintaining a regular staff would be, but for companies able to manage their usage of these services it can be a real life-saver.