A recent Scientific American article discusses the way in which we make snap judgments about people based on their warmth and competence. In it, the author describes how recent research is showing that people all over the world form their initial impression of you based on warmth and competence. Stereotypes feed these impressions, but they do not account for the whole first impression. The research also shows how a gain in one area leads to a loss in the other. For instance, people who are warm are assumed to be less competent than people who are cold. That must be why so many computer consultants treat their small business computer support customers so poorly. They must believe that appearing cold will also make them appear more competent.

Here at Port-to-Port Consulting, we're willing to take that chance. Our entire IT support services staff is committed to treating our network support customers kindly. We understand that most people are a little anxious or perturbed during most of their interactions with us. They either have a problem that is getting in the way of their work success, or they are trying to make a purchase decision based on limited understanding of the options. We strive first to put our computer network services customers at ease. I guess this research means we risk giving them a first impression of incompetence. So be it.

Our primary goal in providing Information Technology services in Indianapolis is to help our customers get better at what they do. We can't start helping if we aren't approachable.

I attended an event last evening at the home of local entrepreneur and philanthropist Scott Jones. The gathering was to introduce Lemonade Day to Indianapolis. My schedule required me to arrive late and leave early. I did get to see the entire presentation and am still wondering about my involvement in Lemonade Day. However, things went bad when I tried to leave. I was the first person to give my parking ticket to the valets. Several more people came out shortly after me and before long a steady trickle of people were departing.

It didn't strike me as strange when the first car to pull up was not mine. I started to be a bit concerned when the fifth one arrived and still I hadn't seen mine. It became ridiculous when I had been standing in the rain for 30 minutes without getting my car. The valets kept telling me they were getting my car, but it was obvious to everyone that they weren't. Finally, after 45 minutes and several polite requests for information, they told me that they couldn't get my car to start. You can't imagine how furious that made me.

The whole ordeal reminded me of one of the important tenets we hold here at Port-to-Port Consulting. We always tell our small business computer support customers the bad news as soon as we know it. They most likely are going to find out sooner or later, so why not tell them right away. Besides, they might be able to help. In the network support business, there are going to be problems. Companies that outsource their IT support services know that as well. They also know what is most critical and can help prioritize in a pinch.

I walked to my car in disgust, got in, turned the steering wheel a quarter turn, and started my car. I waited 45 minutes to find out that something was wrong that only took 10 seconds to correct. I hope these young men learned something from the experience. I'll get my own car next time.

In the grand scheme of things, the thing that we do at our Indianapolis small business computer support company is to help our customers do whatever they do a little bit better. Often, particularly with new network support customers, that amounts to nothing more than keeping their computer network running without crashes. After we've worked with them for a while, that becomes less exciting to them because they become accustomed to the idea that their business computer system should work without unplanned down time. That's when we have to start working to earn our keep.

Sometimes we do obvious things like informing our computer consulting customers about the status of their IT system. We keep them up to date on the age and status of their equipment and help plan replacements, refreshments, and upgrades as they go about budgeting. At other times, we move a bit out of the normal things considered outsourced computer support to areas like online marketing and social media. Every now and then we really step outside the normal envelope and do research that only touches computer support because it's done online. A recent example was a question posed to me by a customer who received several gift cards from friends and vendors at Christmas. He knew he would never visit many of these stores and wanted to know if there were options other than "re-gifting" these cards.

We took the challenge and, believe it or not, there is another option. We found a website, giftcardrescue.com, that allows you to trade in your gift cards for cash or other cards. Sure, my customer could have spent a few minutes online himself and perhaps found this site. I could have told him that I didn't know of anything other than re-gifting and moved on to my next task. But the reality of our outsourced computer service is that we do what our customers need us to do so that they can be more productive. Besides, now that I've found this option, I can share it with the rest of my Indianapolis computer consulting customers and perhaps help them with a small problem as well.

One of the computer network service technicians here at Port-to-Port Consulting just returned from a training class in Tampa, Florida. One of his complaints about spending time in Tampa was that it seemed to him that everything closed around 5:00 PM each day. I explained to him that the majority of people living in Tampa are old (Data bears me out on this one.) and tend to get inside early for the evening. Businesses start closing early because the bulk of their customers go home early.

It struck me that this is an important element in becoming a successful business computer support company. There are things about your target market that are specific to them and quite different from other categories of businesses. This is why we focus ALL of our efforts on Indianapolis small businesses. The difference between the needs of a 30 person law firm and the legal department at Wellpoint is stark. It's nearly impossible to handle the information technology needs of a 40 person real estate company while also worrying about the needs of the City of Carmel.

I'm often asked why we don't go after the network support business of some of our community's larger companies. My answer always revolves around this idea. If I serve large and small customers, whenever there is a conflict between them, the little guy is almost bound to lose. Besides, working with Indianapolis area small businesses allows us to see the impact we have as we help their businesses grow.

When I was in the Air Force I would sometimes come home and, within a few minutes of being there, my wife would say to me, "You spent a lot of time with Colonel Jones today didn't you?" The first few times I would acknowledge that I had and wonder how she knew. I thought perhaps his cologne leached onto me and she could smell it. Eventually I had to ask. She said, "Whenever you spend time with Col Jones, you come home cussing like a drunken sailor."

She was right. Col Jones was a brilliant man, but he had a mouth like, well, a drunken sailor. It turns out that foul language is not only a way to express agony, but a way to alleviate it as well. Recent studies confirm that people who swear can withstand pain longer than those who don't. That explains why those of us in the computer outsourcing business tend to swear more often than most of our peers. Imagine if you had to spend the bulk of your day dealing with computer tech support from a guy named "Bob" in India? That's the life of a network technician.

Now we don't tend to curse and swear in the presence of our Indianapolis small business computer support customers. We wait until we get back in the safety of our office where the free flow of agony relieving language can be heard at a volume considerably above a whisper. We maintain enough decorum to avoid a comparison to Animal House, but we are accustomed to frequent short bursts of four letter words. Now we know it enhances our ability to withstand the hard parts of IT support services.

The new Droid smartphone has been on the market for more than a day and I still haven't been to the local Verizon store to play with one. It's rather unusual for me but my schedule was full yesterday and my wife owns my time today. I'll visit during the Colts game when other gadget geeks are working their man-sized remote controls. I'm really excited about the chance to use a phone that has learned from the iPhone success and works on a more reliable network.

Many of my Indianapolis small business computer support customers know that I'm the go-to guy for gadgets, particularly any portable devices. The upcoming holiday season may arrive too soon for the coolest of the rumored gadgets though. It's almost certain that Apple will not unveil their Tablet (iTablet) before the end of the year. If they miss the Christmas rush, it will probably be Jobs' afterthought during his MacWorld keynote in February. The Barnes and Noble Nook, which looked like it had features that would give the Kindle a run, is now bogged down in legal battles. It appears that B&N stole the device from another company. I'm sure there will be tons of new phones and mp3 players soon, but they bore us all any more. It's time for a device that defines a new category. It may just come from Microsoft.

That's right. While the "I'm a Mac" and "I'm a PC" commercials battle for our desktop dollars, the real fight for our souls is going on in the next generation of portables. Even though Apple may not hit the streets with their Tablet, Microsoft will very likely make it to market this year with their new Courier -- I don't know what generic name to call it -- electronic journal. That's right, it's unique enough that it may create a new category.

Fear not, business computer support buyers, I'll be the first kid on the block with one of these new thingy's.

A recent story in the New York Times brings up a brand new issue related to teh steadily growing amount of data that we all have online at various Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and all the others. Every one of those online services has a volume of information about us that we've put online behind a set of usernames and passwords. What happens to that stuff if you die? Does ownership play into divorce proceedings?

Currently no one knows for sure. Most of the online providers have no provision in their agreements to grant access to your heirs or estate. This is not a common issue that comes up in conversations with my Indianapolis small business computer support customers, but it seems it will before long.

The Times story tells of a woman who, thru her avatar in Second Life, married a man and built a happy virtual home. When the man died, the folks at Linden Labs deleted her entire virtual world because the house had been purchased in his name. The poor woman lost her online mate and all of their online possessions. Imagine if that happened in real life!

This is certainly an unusual thing for your computer consulting company to worry about -- until it becomes important to you or your business. We try to stay one step ahead so our customers can maintain their focus on their work.

One of mycolleagues and I went to the gym after work the other day to work out.  As the workout went on we both noticed how sore we were becoming but said that's good because it means we are improving ourselves.  It is that way for our Indianapolis small business computer support customers as well.  As their businesses mature and grow, they have to keep exercising them to keep them strong and growing.  Our task as their computer consultants is to work along side them so their technology can change as it needs to.  Sometimes, we are involved in those planning meeting but other times we are not.  Often, people don't realize that a decision they're make directly impacts their computer network and should at least include input from the outsourced IT department.  We have had trouble with a couple of clients lately in this area.  One of them uses email to run their business.  Due to the amount of email they were storing we needed to make changes to their system to allow them to keep the email in the way that they prefer. We attempted to change their behavior by archiving email instead of keeping it. They decided as an organization that they wanted to keep the email. ( As their computer consultants we can only advise them.) So, we spent many late nights dealing with corrupt mail storage to get them working. The reality is that they have outgrown their current configuration and need to do some significant upgrades. So even though the large bill for equipment may be painful, it is necessary for them to continue to grow and develop.

This incident reminded me that they hired us to be their computer consultants. Our not saying something turned out to be more painful than just telling them what they needed to hear and addressing it from there.

I know it isn't spring time and no one really wants to do any cleaning, but just think about how much you enjoy the nice clean straightened out space.  That is exactly what we do for our clients.  We try hard to clean out things as time goes by for our Indianapolis Small Business Computer support customers, but for one reason or another it doesn't always happen.

I had a meeting with one of my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers. She mentioned that they had some old computer stuff that needed to be removed from their office.  A couple of techs were scheduled to pick up the equipment from their office.  Boy were we surprised to find filing cabinets and shelves filled with old IT equipment...two vehicles full of stuff! It took 3 hours and 3 people to go through the stuff to see if there was anything of value.  When we finished, there were a few items that we are keeping for spare parts ( a couple USB keyboards and mice, software and spare monitor).  The client wants to help other organizations as much as they can, we will be formatting the laptops and desktops to be reused at another of our Indianapolis small business computer customers.  

Just like at home, the rooms need to be cleaned out in your offices as well. And even though my boss still has a couple of Apple Newton's in his desk (He says the portable device technology is headed back toward this idea.), most of the stuff you stashed away has no usefulness after it's been put away for more than a few months.

We have all, at some point in time, come across the unnavigable web of customer support in one industry or another.  I have days where I want to pull my hair out because of the run-around that support hotlines give me.  The question for someone like me is:  How do I make small business computer support personal for the customer?

One may argue that large companies that use enormous networks of extensions and endless menu options breed efficiency.  To an extent, this is true.  They're able to weed out what kind of problems customers are having with the products, and then sort them into different departments.  I, for one, do not believe this works as a form of Indianapolis small business computer support.  But what happens when your problem falls within multiple options on a menu?  I'm not sure about you, but there's no key on my phone that says "a little bit of #1 and a little bit of #3."  So, without a person to speak to, how do we really identify the computer issues at hand?

The best way to solve an issue is to outline the symptoms that presented themselves.  The only way a customer can truly do this is if he or she is speaking with a live human being.  As far as I'm concerned, it is the only way to perform customer support.  I receive a myriad of phone calls throughout the day, and I do my best to give a direct answer in relation to the issue.  If I cannot provide an answer, then I ask another live human being in the office.  Everyone is happier when they don't have to argue with an automated operator who cannot tell whether or not you said "tech support" or "wreck the fort."

So to anyone out there who'd like to voice his or her concerns to a real person, my ears are open and ready to assist you.  Here's to live customer support!

When we started doing computer network support as Port-to-Port Consulting in 1991, people didn't have much trouble figuring out the connection between our name and the PC on their desk. Sure, we've had a few troubled souls along the way who wanted to know if we were overseas shippers. We even had one poor man who hoped to rent portable toilets from us. Most, however, had no problem understanding that we were referring to all of those different ports on the back of your machine. As the PC has progressed, the number of ports on the back has gone down considerably. Today you can connect just about everything using only a USB port. So much for a cool business name!

About the only thing that is the same about our Indianapolis small business computer support company is the name. Our logo has changed several times. Nearly 100 people have worked here at one time or another. We've served more than 300 different businesses. And the IT industry has changed so much that we tell stories to our new staff members that sound like our grandparents stories of walking to school in the snow (uphill both ways).

My son turned 21 over the weekend. Thinking about how much he has changed thru the years made me start to think about how much other things have changed. One steady element of central Indiana computer outsourcing has been the people at Port-to-Port Consulting. While there are as many as 60 companies in the Indianapolis area that provide some subset of the services we provide, few of them have been around for more than a few years. Most are the result of recent layoffs. 

It does make me feel old to reminisce about the times we've spent working with Indianapolis small businesses on their Information Technology support. It also makes me proud of the incredible things we've done for our community thru our efforts to keep some of the most vital organizations in the area operating at peak efficiency.

In a meeting recently we discussed what we can do to help my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers.  We were discussing leasing computers instead of purchasing.   At first glance, I really did not like the idea and was ready to shoot it down.  I thought what is the difference between leasing a car (which I do) and leasing the computer.  If you think about the reasons you lease a car they apply to the computer as well.  I decided to lease because I didn't want to worry about the "extended" maintenance on my car.  As with a computer you don't want to have to worry about paying to replace the hard drive in the computer.  As with a car, you might have to have work done to it but you don't typically have to pay for those repairs.  Another reason is that you can get more bang for your buck.  Same thing goes with the computer. You can get newer equipment at a lower price because of how you are paying for it.  Instead of paying a large upfront cost you are just paying it monthly.  Last reason that I considered leasing was for the latest and greatest.  Under the program we are considering offering to our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers, they would get the upgraded software at no additional cost, so when office upgrades happen they would be in the rotation to get the new software at no additional cost.  How great is that to get upgrades at no additional cost.  They definitely don't offer that with the car lease.  My minivan is still a minivan. 

Check back for more updates on this program because it might be just the thing you are looking for.

During these times there are a lot of companies that are looking for ways to cut back their budget. Most will look at marketing, supplies or even employee salaries; they would never think to let go of their technical support department. Well the truth is that companies can save a lot of money in this area.

IT support does not necessarily have to be an in-house job; there are several computer consulting services that can do the same job of the internal IT technician but can do it for much cheaper. Consider this - if an internal IT technician is getting paid $60,000 a year to support 10 computers, an outsourced IT company could support each of those computers for something like $100 a month; this would be saving $500 each month. Also with computer outsourcing you have access to an entire team of IT technicians instead of just one which gives more areas of professionalism and experience.

We have several Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing clients that save lots of money each year just by using our services. Computer consulting services work great for small companies that have only four or five people and can also benefit larger companies that have several servers and programs that require a lot of maintenace. The next time your company is looking to cut back on costs, consider an Indianapolis small business computer support company like us that can handle all your IT needs.

The iPhone has been dominating the phone industry for years now. Everybody has one and the numbers continue to grow. Many of our Indianapolis small business computer support customers are migrating to this new trend due to the abilities and the applications that are available on this phone. With new phones mocking this technology the iPhone has shifted its advertising to their applications, which is actually nothing unique.

Many of the new smartphones and handhelds have application support. Windows Mobile has hundreds of websites that host both free and paid apps for their phones. Google has released their Android Cupcake source to developers so there are already applications being made for a phone that hasn't even exploded yet. The new Palm Pre source code has already been figured out and homebrew applications are starting to surface. This makes the iPhone just another phone; even the accelerometer is something that is coming standard in many new phones.

Some of our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing clients  are always looking for the most useful handheld device and some turn to the iPhone. When their one or two year cell phone agreement is up the chances of them getting another iPhone is going to be slim. The new line of phones coming out have all the abilities of the iPhone and will have apps just like the iPhone. For now the iPhone may reign supreme in the phone market but their current method of marketing, "There's an app for that", will not gain customers when Google, Palm and Microsoft can produce a similar app store with a phone that comes with twice the battery life as the iPhone.

One thing that our Indianapolis small business computer support clients always ask about is how secure their computers are. Everyone always seems to worry about their security and whether or not they are vulnerable to attacks. The truth is, there is nothing completely secure.

Whenever an encryption method or a secure program is compiled the creators will take into account all the possible vulnerabilities and attempts to break through their protection. When they feel it is secure enough they will release it out to the world. Once it is open to everyone, hackers will have their hands on it as well. By taking cracks and trying different methods to break the encryption they eventually find a loophole through the defense. This is how all computer security works today; even the Department of Defense is hit with tons of unauthorized access alerts each year.

By purchasing the top of the line in computer security and taking extra precautions you are only guaranteeing security from the everyday public that aren't computer saavvy. If there is something you have that hackers want bad enough, they will get it. There is no complete security, although by taking extra precautions you will make your data a strong challenge to those who have a keen interest in it.

IT support services are still a rapidly changing area. We've been provided small business computer support to companies in central Indiana for a long time, and we keep wondering when the pace of change will slow. In actuality the pace is increasing. Indianapolis small businesses, like businesses elsewhere, are becoming more dependent on their computer systems while understanding less about how it works.

One of the things that has hindered the pace of change has been the inability of computer service providers to forget what has worked for them in the past. Humans are creatures of habit, and habits are easily formed and impossible to kill. The reason outsourced IT services are usually better than internal staffs is that the outsourced provider is forced to do new things because he's bringing on new business. The internal guys can freeze the system and provide all kinds of reasons why the small business owner should go along with keeping things as they are.

Our inability to forget has gotten even worse because we do some much electronically and we keep all of those bits and bytes forever. Why? Because we can. You know as well as I do that the majority of the email you have filed away (or "saved" in your Deleted Items) will never be seen again. It has absolutely no value to any living creature, but you keep it because it doesn't take up space in the closet or filing cabinet. Your server doesn't look any bigger with it than it did without it.

Forgetting what worked in the past is key to our ability to move forward to new stuff. Learning how to be active forgetters is becoming a new management skill.

Because a web connection is not a permanent connection, it is necessary for web developers to use tricks to make it seem like the connection is permanent. Oftentimes this is done with cookies. These are little files that hold some basic information about your interaction with a particular website. They are necessary in order to make the web experience the one you've come to expect. Cookies got a bad reputation when sites started creating super cookies that would contain information from several sites you visited and started to tell more of your story than yo might have wanted. Then hackers started reading cookies from other websites to gather information about you. This led to the cookie craze that had everyone deleting their cookies after each web session. It generated features in web browsers that restricted which cookies a site could see.

Devoted web developers worked around this by creating another kind of marker to place on your machine. These little snippets of code are generically called Bugs. They aren't talked about as much, but they are every bit as information rich as cookies ever were. Most Web 2.0 sites use bugs, as does Google Analytics and many shopping sites. You can find details about web bugs from a site set up by UC Berkeley.

When my Indianapolis small business computer support customers ask me what they can do about increasing their privacy online, I have to tell them "not much." Sure, there are obvious things like staying away from strange sites, and avoiding random links. But the reality is that the rich web experience we've come to take for granted is only possible by allowing web sites to collect information about us in the background. Most of the data is not dangerous or threatening. Yet when pulled together, they can tell a lot about a person. In my Air Force days, these were called EEFIs (Essential Elements of Friendly Information). Collect enough of these and you get a pretty good profile of a person or organization.

I have been working for an Indianapolis small business computer support firm for a while and it seems that we are only the heroes whenever your computer is broken and we are there to fix it. Even then, we are the enemy until we are able to get it fixed. There is a lot more going on behind the scenes when everything is running smooth and the typical computer network services technician is not just hanging out playing games until your computer breaks.

There are several things that can bring your network to its knees if they go unattended. Consider your email for instance; all the email in your inbox along with all the other employees who want to keep a huge folder full of the daily joke emails can take up a lot of disk space on your server. If the server gets full of space then everything will stop working. The business computer support technicians will have to ask you to clean out all your emails so there is enough space on the server for everything to operate. Fortunately, however, at my Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing office we are monitoring and managing the disk space on the servers so this problem is addressed even before the company knows it.  Without network technicians your server would fill up on disk space and your network would be down for good.

The IT support technicians are always on top of things and when the network is down they are always there to get it back up and running as fast as possible. When it seems things are quiet on your network the technicians are not hiding out playing games on the computer; they are busy keeping your network functional for all the users. The IT technician is not just some computer geek; they are an unsung hero.

I work in an Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing office that requires communication to our customers to stay alive. One morning we experienced phone issues and had to work with our phone service provider to get everything back up. During their series of visits I saw what a customer does not want to see when we go to visit them.

First, there was no communication about what was going on. The technicians came in and went straight to the basement to start working. They did not say what they were going to do and they continued to come in and out all day long with no status updates. We were still without phones and could not provide our Indianapolis small business computer support while we had no clue what was going on.

The second thing that seemed unprofessional was that they were taking frequent trips back to our office for the same issue. The technicians had several continued visits but could not fix the issue either due to lack of understanding the problem or lack of equipment preparation. To be completely prepared they should have brought equipment for all the possible resolutions.

In the end the phones were fixed and we were able to provide IT support to our customers but we keep this experience in mind when determining what our customers want to see.  As an Indianapolis small business computer support company, we need to provide absolute professionalism and preparation; anything less would be unacceptable.

Our computers, like our cars homes and bodies, need to be taken care of.  They need regular attention.  It's all too often that we get a call from someone in a panic because something has "crashed".  Luckily Indianapolis small business computer support is alive and well in the form of Pertingo Computer Support Services. 

Pertingo Computer Support Service offers the all-around care for the hardware and software that keeps your business running.  It not only includes IT Support Services but Business Planning, Project Management, Help Desk and Remote Support, Vendor Support, Disaster Recovery, Training and Disposition. 

Our Indianapolis small business computer outsourcing customers benefit from a single source for all of their IT aches and pains.  Just one call is all it takes. 

Let Port-to-Port Consulting be your source for computer consulting services.  Check us out at www.pertingo.com or www.port-to-port.com.