IT for a company that did not think it needed any
PestZerro started the way most small businesses do: one owner, a truck, a phone and a laptop. The owner knew his trade and was clear that he did not need an IT company. He agreed to one consultation to see what a technical person would say.
The consultation
We sat down for an hour and went through how the business ran. Customer names, addresses and treatment notes lived in the phone and in a free email account. Invoices were a spreadsheet. The laptop had whatever came on it from the store, and the password was the one he used everywhere. He had already lost a day once when the phone went for a swim. Nothing on that list was unusual, and all of it was fixable in a week.
Setting up properly
We registered a proper domain and moved the business onto email at that address, so customers wrote to the company rather than to a personal account. Contacts, calendar and files synced between the phone and the laptop, with the copy in the cloud encrypted and backed up on a schedule he never has to think about. The laptop was set up fresh: disk encryption, automatic updates, a password manager seeded with new passwords for every account and a second step on sign in for the ones that mattered. We put a quoting and invoicing tool in place that works from the truck and keeps a record of every job and every chemical used, which matters in his trade.
Safe with customer data
A pest control company knows where its customers live, when they are away and what is in their basements. The owner wanted to be able to say that this was handled with care. Customer records now sit in one place with access logged and the backups are tested by restoring from them. We wrote him a plain privacy policy to match what the business does, ready for the day the website goes up.
An IT department on call
Since the setup, the arrangement is simple. When a question comes up, he asks. A new hire needs an account, a supplier portal will not log in, a document will not open, the phone needs replacing. Most answers come back the same day and most problems are solved remotely. Updates, backups and monitoring run in the background and we check on them without being asked.
Today
PestZerro runs on the same setup, with a second technician on the road and the owner spending his time on customers instead of computers. The consultation that was meant to be a one off turned into the IT team behind the business.
Creating my own start-up company I was hesitant and didn't really think I required the services of Viscous Bits. However, after a consultation I quickly realised it was best to have them help my business handle my IT needs. I now consult Viscous Bits every time I have questions for prompt and helpful service. Having Viscous Bits as my IT Support team makes me feel comfortable knowing my data is safe and secure.
Stack
Microsoft 365, Windows and Android, Bitwarden, encrypted cloud backups, a small business invoicing tool