All Managed Services Providers tout their IT expertise. They might say that it’s in their “wheelhouse.”
You hear that phrase everywhere these days, right? But have you wondered where it comes from?
It was originally a boating term, referring to the place that houses the wheel on a boat, command central. Later the term became associated with baseball to refer to the part of a batter’s strike zone in which he/she is most likely to hit a home run.
So, when you say it’s in your wheelhouse, you’re saying that it’s an area over which you have command and control. In baseball vernacular, your chances of hitting it out of the park are high.
The degree to which IT expertise is in the wheelhouse of IT firms may vary, but it’s inarguable that an accounting firm who handles IT for a client has strayed from their wheelhouse.
Such was the case with one of our new clients, an orthodontics practice whose accounting firm was moonlighting as their IT provider. The situation was becoming awkward, however. The owners experienced issues like sporadic wireless and the "spinning wheel of death" when they used their dental software. It was time to explore a different solution.
Play to your Strengths
Rightly so. When we did our assessment, we discovered that a firewall was in place but misconfigured, there was no backup for files stored on the server, and that a guest WiFi network was present but unusable due to a “missing” password. Most troubling was the fact that no update or patch management process was in place, putting the practice’s HIPPA compliance at risk.
Our top recommendations for the client:
- Reconfigure firewall, ensure warranty and subscription services are current
- Consider IT Radix service plan to manage backups and update/patch management on an ongoing basis
- Conduct PCI, HIPPA Compliance review to assess current vulnerability
- Obtain wireless password and review in the future as appropriate
The client decided to let their accounting firm stick to accounting and let IT Radix handle IT. Everyone in their respective wheelhouse.
