Connecticut's IT Managed Services Blog

On February 5th, 2014 the Wall Street Journal Business section featured an article tackling the topic of paid sick leave for employees who work for small businesses. Several owners were interviewed, and NSI's President, Tom McDonald, was among them.

"NSI has been in business almost 30 years, and I've always thought of the company culture as that of a family.  Recently, we implemented an internal employee satisfaction and feedback system through a service called TINYPulse which allows any employee to participate in weekly surveys, anonymously.  The feedback I get is great, and has encouraged positive changes throughout our organization such as process changes, improved communications, new applications, a new employee lounge and some much needed remodeling.  However, the one thing that impresses me the most, is the amount of employees who use the word "family" when referring the NSI in their anonymous comments through the TINYPulse portal."

What is a Help Desk?  President of Connecticut based IT Support Provider NSI, Explains:  I recently stumbled across a Jenna Marbles vblog episode entitled, “What are this” (I would link to it, but she drops the F bomb… we provide a perfect excuse for you to visit YouTube at the end of this post, what you do from there is up to you).  The video made me think about how we communicate with our customers, and the assumptions we may be making after 28 years in the business.  Beginning with:  is it spelled Help Desk, or Helpdesk?  Officially, it’s “help”  “desk”, but there are many uses of “helpdesk” out there, so we use both which allows people to find the information they are looking for.

So, what is a Helpdesk, and why would you want one?

NSI's own Irene Caldwell was recently featured in the Weston-Redding-Easton Patch, a local paper for the Redding community. Irene has lived in Redding for 4 years and has been working in IT for over 15 years. She just recently returned to NSI a month ago, but is already pushing new business and helping her clients with her extensive knowledge of business and her experence working for companies such as IBM. Irene is helping her clients by offering free educational workshops at Uconn Stamford as outlined in her article,

“One of the other things I do for NSI is run several university classes. Over the next few months I’ll be running free summer educational workshops at UConn Stamford. They are business classes open to all business owners and anyone considering starting a business. The first one is “Enhancing your Business Plan."

Our last article, 5 Different Managed Service Provider (MSP) price models, how to choose the best one for your SMB, focused on the pricing models of different MSPs and how that would relate to your own business. This article focuses on what they actually cover and what to look for in the contract itself. Here are 7 topic areas that you should ask your MSP before signing the contract: