How Technology Partners Benefit Schools
Tue 01 July, 2014
At Soft Egg, we believe there's a different way of approaching school IT support and development.
It's a methodology we've proved time and again working with schools.
Traditionally, schools use local IT companies to fix problems, software and equipment on an ad hoc basis when it breaks down or presents issues. But this isn't enough any more.
Schools need technology partners who will help them:
- Make the right IT choices
- Keep equipment in good running order
- Pro-actively resolve IT problems before they become issues
- Make sense of the overwhelming choice available to schools
- Develop your IT systems over time at competitive cost
What is a technology partner?
A technology partner, according to our definition is simply a company with specialist experience in your field, who is willing to take the time to work with you to improve and get the best benefit out of your IT over time.
They'll continuously work with you to ensure your IT needs are met and to help you make sense of the complex decisions, opportunity costs and trade-offs when you're investing in the long term health of your network.
By working wih a technology partner, you can develop a long term plan for investment that is pro-active rather than reactive, allowing you to make the best long term use of your budgets. We all know that failing to plan is planning to fail - but in the heat of everyday life and short term urgencies, it's useful to know that you've got someone there who is looking after your best interests - working to build a long term partnership rather than a short term one-off sale.
This symbiosis benefits everybody by gradually fixing core problems and moving away from the short termism that can often skew and corrupt important decisions which will affect students for years to come.
Being a technology partner is much more pleasant for a school IT company like our own, because we can drop the salesman hat and work on actively helping you and providing a high quality service as well as work hard to minimise short, medium and long term challenges. For us, it means working as a team with our customers, listening closely to identify goals, pain-points and concerns. Together, we face those goals and overcome them, knowing all the time that what prolongs and extends the relationship is looking after the best interests of our schools.
It seems simple, but it's a paradigm change.
It's also very different from getting IT consultants in, who write long reports (and charge hefty sums) but then have nothing to do with the implementation of the solutions or involvement in making sure they work at a practical level.
By including IT consultancy, audits and IT reviews as an inclusive and core part of our service, as well as making sure that those recommendations are implemented in the corret manner, together we have the ability to produce better solutions and healthy, honest working relationships over time.
That's what we think being a technology partner means.