Two different approaches to a problem. One looks to act when a situation or set of circumstances arises, and the other endeavours to resolve or even prevent issues ever arising.
But which is better, and why have we at VMit chosen to invest into software to change our perspective?
What does each practice involve?
Reactive approaches involve reading a situation or crisis and applying the most appropriate solution in that moment. Depending on how long the situation has been known about and the expertise of the person(s) responding, the response will vary greatly. It may take a little while to take a step back and assess, then proceed with the resolution.
Proactive approaches are all about prevention, anticipating problems and taking steps to avoid them happening. This might vary widely from putting in additional security & protection, delivering training or creating handbooks, or investing in redundancy & backup methods. Some of these may take months to implement, but reduce the risk of issues occurring.
In a very basic way, they can be compared in a “if it happens, I will” vs “when it happens, I will” policy of problem solving.
Which is better?
You’ve all heard the phrase, prevention is better than cure? It’s not as simple as this though, as both have their place
| Reactive | Proactive |
| Able to handle the unexpected with immediate results | Anticipates problems before they arise |
| Able to think outside the box and respond creatively | Has a plan to respond, based on experience or good practice |
| Generally more risk taking, and with fewer safety nets | Takes steps to put mitigation steps in place |
| Cheaper, easier and faster if no issues occur | Can be costly in time & money to put all prevention measures in place |
What about the IT world?
Applying all of what we’ve looked at above into the IT world, we are starting to see a shift more towards Proactive maintenance and support. Looking to put in measures that mitigate a problem arising, but additionally creating a plan if it still does.
Benefits of being proactive mean
- Improved efficiency, keeping your systems running smoothly
- Reduced downtime, by resolving minor issues before they become major
- Making informed decisions about your IT
- Having a strategy for replacements and improvements
- Enhanced disaster recovery safety, with mitigations already in place & backups if required
These will all be achieved through a mix of patch management, antivirus and backups, computer monitoring tools with automatic alerts, creating policies and procedures for a disaster scenario, and having documentation on all equipment used.
The ConnectWise difference
At the start of 2023 we decided to make an investment into ConnectWise, which contains both Remote Monitoring and Customer Relationship Management tools. This means we can prepare ourselves (and the end customer) for the scenario.
Connectwise is a set of IT tools that
- collect information about the hardware and applications running on computers, providing us with activity reports
- detect issues, reports them, and allowing our technicians to resolve those issues from their own computer
- provide remote, proactive monitoring of computer and network health; to remotely fix issues before they interrupt your business—sometimes before you even know you have a problem
- schedule maintenance tasks in the background, to keep your system running smoothly
- interlink computers to customer records & contacts & time recording
- provide full Windows update patch management
Let’s take an example – a slow computer
The reactive approach:
- Customer calls to report issue
- We take remote control, and diagnose to find the issue. In our example this is the hard drive
- The issue can’t be fixed remotely, and has to be brought to our office
- We create a ticket for the issue based on the evidence we found
- We replace the drive, and either migrate the data or perform a fresh install
- Computer returns to the customer
This leads to a lot of downtime for the end user, and if it’s a crucial computer it could be a showstopper for the whole business.
The proactive approach with ConnectWise
- The system creates a baseline of performance
- Computer is detected as moving away from this baseline, perhaps with drive errors as well but not impacting workflow, and creates a ticket automatically
- We contact the customer to arrange troubleshooting steps, and plan a replacement
- Whilst performance is still acceptable, the work to replace the drive can be scheduled at convenient time
- Computer is returned to customer, perhaps with the end user not even realising
The long story short, is we can provide a much better service, with reduced downtime.
That’s a winning combination, surely?
Growth through Innovation
Finally, our investment would not have been possible without a grant we secured through the New Anglia Growth Through Innovation Fund, which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
At VMit, we are committed to investing and expanding our product offering for customers