Our clients tell us they partner with us because “we make technology work” for them. This statement has dual meaning to our customers. Firstly, we work with our clients to understand their business and investigate how technology may assist in providing solutions to business challenges, putting technology to work in their organizations. Secondly, Protocol Technologies Inc. has developed a reputation for technical expertise and a commitment to be highly responsive and dedicated to servicing our clients. Services are often provided remotely and preemptively with the use of automated system monitoring tools providing a higher level of responsiveness to your needs.

One of the most important steps in keeping operating costs in control is planning. Planning for the known is fairly easy.  Our experienced consultants know what questions to ask. They have your best interests at heart. Our consulting team can help you plan for the future, turn the unknowns into the knowns, and help you build a  plan to ensure your business is protected.

We offer a variety of Consulting Services designed to address specific requirements and clearly identify solutions.  Not all problems can be resolved with technology replacement or installation. It can be as simple as reconfiguring existing tools, showing the end user how to perform some basic functions, or completely redesigning a business process for efficiency.

One of our goals is to right size the solution. We address the “business pain” to find the proper solution that produces the largest return on investment. Every effort is made to insure the solution provides for future growth.

Resolving business problems – what we call Business Pain – our goal is to reduce or eliminate it, using technology and our experience and depth of skills.

Improve business processes – with a little creative thought, and drawing upon our experience with similar business models, we can improve your existing processes to add efficiencies, reduce costs, and with an eye on ROI. For example.. build “MS WORD” macros for repetitive word processing functions, like marketing mail outs. Most business use only 25% of their MS Office suite products. A lot of time is wasted when they don’t know how to use their business tools. We can perform an “Education Assessment Profile” and coordinate with top local trainers to provide the needed instruction.

With a Technology Assessment profile (TAP™), we can help reduce costs, keep your information systems up and running – reduce costs associated with downtime. A proper plan in place and a little regular maintenance can save a bundle on the bottom line. A Technical Assessment Profile (TAP™) is a detailed analysis of business procedures and technology.

Information Security Audit – An audit is conducted to determine your risks and threats. Much more than just a firewall to keep the hackers out, but more about making sure tools like your anti-virus and backup software are working properly. We can review who has access to your corporate information and who shouldn’t have. For any business that creates, gathers and stores data, we can help you determine how you should store your data and where to store it. We will review how you do your offsite rotation schemes and determine what will work best for your business.

Disaster recovery planning. We help determine what data is at risk, and what would be the best solution to get your business up and running and accessing that data again. For example; do you have a copy of the licenses, operating systems and application media available off site. We can help you plan for the what-ifs’ in business, like break-in’s and fire. Downtime is expensive no matter what the reason.

In Summary our approach is to plan up front to reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and improve business processes. It has never been so important to control capital expenditures, reduce operating expenses and keep staffing costs in line. We have been very successful in helping businesses and organizations save money by utilizing a TAP™.

By conducting a Technical Assessment Profile (TAP™), Protocol has saved customers as much as $300,000.00 per year.

Call our sales team; ask about having us do a TAPlite, a condensed overview of how you use technology and what “business pain” you might be experiencing. Our team can then determine what type of consulting and planning is right for your organization.

Network Managed Services

Simply put, Managed Services transfers the responsibility of ensuring your network’s reliability to Protocol Technologies. We charge your business a fixed monthly fee for managing and monitoring  your network. If something breaks, we fix it, we pay.

Traditionally in Information Technology, an unreliable network means that your IT provider will be on-site fixing things, and you will receive a billing for each moment that they are there.

Protocol Technologies wants to work with your business to get your network to the point that it stable with minimized chances of down time.  If there is down time, you know that you will be taken care of promptly, professionally and it is covered as part of a fixed monthly cost.

Key Benefits for your Business:

• Peace of Mind, we monitor your network 24 hours a day automatically
• Single point of contact for all IT issues
• Defined service levels and response times
• Flat Monthly Rate per device / server
• Lower Total Cost of Ownership

How Much Will It Cost?

Cost depends on the network you have, the applications you use, and the type of equipment you have in your organization. For more information please contact Protocol Technologies and your friendly professional Account Representative will discuss it with you!

Service Level Agreements

Protocol Technologies provides many different Service Level Agreements. Our goal is to provide customized Service Agreements that  best fit  each customer’s unique business needs and to create tangible, measurable IT services and objectives. Our strategy manages the services provided by IT and balances them with the expectations established with our customers.

For example, a business unit may ask for encrypted security to support financial transactions across the network. From an IT perspective, the objectives necessary to support the terms of the agreement will require additional technology to ensure security requirements are achieved. Additionally, the objectives will require the technology in place to monitor and ensure compliance within the objectives.

Service level objectives help align IT to support those business initiatives and meet the SLA that has been defined by IT and our customers. These services and objectives must be managed during the design, build, and manage phases of the various initiatives.

Preventative Maintenance

Much as the name implies, preventive maintenance, often abbreviated PM, refers to performing proactive maintenance in order to prevent system problems. This is contrasted to diagnostic or corrective maintenance, which is performed to correct an already existing problem. Anyone who has ever owned or cared for a car knows all about preventive maintenance. After all, you don’t change your oil and air filter in response to a problem situation (normally), you do it so that your engine will last and you won’t have car troubles in the future.

Here are some reasons why you should develop a preventive maintenance plan for your PC:

Saves Money:

I’m sure we’ve all heard the old adage “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”. It’s trite, but it is also true. Avoiding problems with your PC will save you money in the long run, compared with laying out cash for new components or repair jobs.

Saves Time:

Saves time? How can taking two hours a month or whatever to perform maintenance save time? Simple: it saves you the much bigger hassles of dealing with system failures and data loss. Most preventive maintenance procedures are quite simple compared to troubleshooting and repair procedures–now those can really eat up your time at a fantastic rate.

Helps Safeguard Your Data:

For most people, the data on the hard disk is more important than the hardware that houses it. Therefore, taking steps to protect this data makes sense, and that is what PM is all about.

Improves Performance:

Some parts of your system will actually degrade in performance over time. Our preventive maintenance will help improve the speed of your system in these respects.

Desktop/Server Support

Warranty Services

Our experience and long standing relations with our suppliers allow us to provide unsurpassed warranty services. Protocol prides itself in the industry relations we have established to ensure the  products we support will be looked after satisfactorily during the warranty period.

Warranty periods do vary from manufaturer, and so can the way warranty services are carried out. Typically a warranty coverage is covered by the manufacturer and if the brand is servicable by Protocol, then that usually means a depot or “in house warranty” is applicable. We can service on your site as well and that is best determined by our technicians and th e warranty coverage.

During the Warranty period our courteous and professional staff provide the necessary services to ensure our customer’s products get repaired in a timely manner.

Repair Services

For customers requiring repairs, upgrades, virus removal or problem solving, our Technical Staff members are equipped with the necessary experience and training to provide our customers with prompt and professional service. Our attention to detail and focus on business needs, produces the customer confidence level to know that we will always make recommendations based on what the best options are.

Network Security

Your businesses information security is only as strong as it’s weakest link.

Network Security is a multi-layered system that keeps your data secure, yet still accessible. Security is always a balance between security and accessibility, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. With the help of our security professionals you will be able to get your business done, while still being able to have a piece of mind.

Security is all about layers. Every good solution covers all the layers of the network:

• Application Security
• Computer Security
• Network Security
• Information Security
• Physical Security
• Personnel Security

To forget any of the many levels of security leaves your business vulnerable to information loss, fraud and potential liability.

Contact your Protocol Technologies Account Representative for more information on how to get your network secured!

Software Development

From writing scripts that acomplish specific tasks  or developming entire software systems, Protocol is here to assist.  Customers have engaged us to review business processes with them or develop customized solutions to their business objectives.  This may involve tweaking an off the shelf product, developing a scheduled script, or perhaps writing an application to meet the needs of your business.

License Management

Managing hardware and software is an essential part of many of our clients businesses.  Whether tracking a serial number for warranty purposes is required or ensuring legal compliance on software, Protocol provides these services to your organization as part of our value add mentality.  Understanding the complexities around software licensing can be  difficult. As your technology partner, you can be assured that we will help you navigate and manage your software licensing by managing your acquisitions and ensuring that you understand the usage rights and renewals of the purchased product.

Supplies

Yes we can help you maintain the right supplies for your products. As part of managing your systems we will make sure you always have on hand the consumables you require, ensuring you are always operational. Not only do we stock most common consumable products for your devices, we will deliver and manage your supplies all while being competitively priced.

When you can’t find the supplies or accessories you are looking for, make sure to speak to one of our sales associates.  With the expertise and long standing relationships we have with manufactures and suppliers, we are able to source products that others can not.

In doing our part to keep the landfills clear of toxins, we offer a recycle consumables program. We will take away your spent toner and ink cartridges and have them recycled back into production.