Much of our internal conversations at Architel deal with mistakes or failures escalated BY our clients.  Today I wanted to talk about how WE as individuals need to escalate issues when we see our clients making mistakes.  For example, we have one client who insisted on purchasing technology that we specifically recommended they avoid.  Specifically, the client purchased a spam and firewall solution that we knew to be difficult to support, ironically there was no economic advantage to the purchase (i.e. the recommended solution was approximately the same cost).

Since purchasing the systems, against our recommendations, the client has had non-stop problems receiving email through their spam system and allowing connections through their firewall.  Each time the client has a problem we have the same conversation within Architel, “We told them not to buy that pile of crap.”  You can only say this to your clients once or twice.  To be frank, I am tired of our complaining.  When we take on the risk of support our client’s networks, it is our responsibility to ensure they don’t make mistakes.  We, as individuals, need to escalate these ‘mistakes’ before they become Architel’s problem.

If you (i.e. Architel employees) see our clients making a critical mistake, i.e. not following our advice, you need to escalate the matter internally.  Go through the process.  Bring the matter to a head with management.  Have a conversation with Scott about your concern.  I suspect that if Scott had simply talked to the owner of the company and explained our concern the client wouldn’t have purchased the equipment saving us countless hours of complaining and associated work.  If the client doesn’t agree we have two choices as a company a) let the client go or b) raise the client’s price ~ it is that simple.  Our clients hire us to help them manage their IT infrastructure, that is our job, pure and simple.  We can’t blame them when we let THEM manage their IT infrastructure for us…