The shop management system is the business
Whatever you run the shop on is the one system that must be up, and it usually depends on a specific machine at the counter, a stable connection, and a printer nobody has touched in years. We find out what it actually needs rather than what the vendor's brochure says, and we monitor those pieces first.
Bay tablets and the office are not the same network
Tablets, scan tools, cameras and the customer Wi-Fi almost always sit on the same flat network as the machine holding customer names, addresses and payment records. Splitting them takes one visit and it is the highest value change most shops can make.
A single-location shop cannot afford a bad Saturday
With one location there is no other counter to send work to, so the recovery plan matters more than the prevention story. We make sure the estimating and payment path can come back fast, and that somebody other than the owner knows how.
Growing shops usually outgrow the setup before they notice
The network that ran three technicians rarely handles seven plus a service advisor and a courtesy vehicle system. The symptom is intermittent slowness that nobody can reproduce, and the cause is almost always the equipment rather than the internet line everyone blames.
Common questions
- Do you know shop management software?
- We support the machines, the network and the connection it runs on, and we work with your vendor for anything inside the application. Knowing where our responsibility ends stops the finger pointing that usually happens when a shop calls both parties.
- Our card reader keeps dropping. Is that IT or the processor?
- Usually the network path, occasionally the processor, and it is worth finding out which before anyone replaces hardware. Separating the payment path from the rest of the shop fixes a surprising number of these.
- Can you get Wi-Fi to the back bays?
- Almost always, with the right access points in the right places. It needs a short survey first because a metal building is a genuinely hostile environment for wireless.
- We have cameras. Can you look after those too?
- Yes, and the first thing we check is whether they are exposed to the internet with default credentials, which is more common than anyone expects.
- Do you work around our hours?
- Yes. Anything disruptive happens before opening, after close, or on your slowest day, because taking the counter machine down mid-morning is not an option.
- We are a small shop. Is this worth it?
- If a day of downtime costs you more than the monthly figure, yes. If it does not, we will tell you that rather than sell you a contract.
Where we do this
These are the towns where this kind of business actually clusters. We work across the whole 30 mile area, so if you are somewhere else on the list, call and ask.
Start with a phone call
You describe what is annoying you. Fifteen minutes, no discovery-call ritual.
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