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This is a very important message for all equity principals, partners, directors and practice managers. If you outsource some or all of the IT services and IT support for your Perth professional services firm, this blog contains very important information that will be extremely beneficial for you to know now that could prevent you from making a very big, expensive mistake that may cost you your personal and professional reputations, your firm and your family’s livelihood if you don’t make a tough decision now.
About 10 or so months ago, I was contacted by a law firm with around 10 on their team who are based in regional Australia. They were having ongoing frustrations with their former IT support company and had ditched them in favour of trying to take care of things themselves.
After running through our standard processes, conducting a review, presenting our report of findings and the action plan to resolve them the decision stalled. I then found out the firm was in the early stages of being sold. We performed some ad-hoc work for them to help with a few issues they were experiencing.
Fast forward a couple of months and we were again contacted to help them merge 2 existing entities into one. Again, I ran through our standard processes and presented our action plan to resolve their issues with the merging of the 2 entities. I was advised that we were cheaper than the existing IT support company of the purchaser firm, however they needed to get another quote.
Turns out the third quote was under half what I had said it would be for us to do the work and they went with the third IT support company. Obviously, things did not go well with the merging of the firms from a technology point of view. Two months after it was supposed to be finished, problems were still being discovered. We again helped out this other IT support company in resolving this latest issue. Each one of these issues was another time and materials bill in this case from two separate IT companies.
Side Note: One of the ways we differ from many IT support or IT services companies is that we will look at a project and give you a fixed price to perform the work. We look at the project from all angles and envisage everything that needs to be done and include it. Naturally, when this third IT support company was brought in, they obviously didn’t do this as otherwise their price would have been on par or higher than ours.
Now it’s the beginning of this year, and I find out there is now a fourth IT support company being brought in to take over the firms IT support. Then in late February I was contacted by someone associated with the firm who had received an email that they would never have gotten had we performed the work.
The email was a typical scam, where they impersonate your firm and send an email to yourself advising you, they have pictures from your webcam and internet history of you looking at embarrassing material and you need to pay them in bitcoin to make them delete it. The firm director was advised, and nothing was done to resolve the issue.
Now to the most embarrassing part….
Just this week I receive an email sent by the “director” of the firm advising me “You've received a new Supplier Credit Statement From XYZ Lawyers”, name changed to protect the firm in question. Obviously, and it goes without saying, that the directors account had been hacked and this email had been sent to everyone he had previously emailed or received emails from. This is the sort of thing that could break this firm or bring it to its knees.
Imagine this happened to you and one of your most VIP clients received this “Supplier Statement” email and fell victim to it. Next minute their bank accounts are being drained or their business is being held to ransom. When they find out this was caused because of your mistake, do you think they would want to do business with you or associate with you again?
Now being that the firm is based in regional Australia and originally being from regional Australia myself I know what country towns are like. This type of thing would be 100 to 1000 times worse in a country town because everyone talks. The chances of this mistake being forgotten quickly, if at all, are slim to none.
Could your firm survive that?
So, what can you do to avoid making the same mistake?
As I wrote about in my recent book, Protect Your Legacy How To Confidently Protect You And Your Firm From The FINES, LAWSUITS, CUSTOMER LOSS, RUINED REPUTATION & PR NIGHTMARE Resulting From A Data Breach And Cybercrime.
You want to ask yourself the following questions
- What will it cost me and my team in time, wages, and fees to find a solution ourselves?
- What will it cost me, my team, and the firm in reputation and livelihood damage when we suffer a cyber attack due to the failings of our existing system or supplier?
Then consider the value of investing in our monthly services
- What benefits do we get from concentrating on our strengths, not finding an IT solution on our own and not just “trusting” our current IT “guy” or company has it covered?
- Where can I re-invest time and money saved from a cyber-attack into the firm’s growth or to use that money saved as a profit distribution?
Another lesson my dad taught me, measure thrice, cut once. He was custom cabinet maker and custom furniture builder who always got repeat orders.
I can say I’ve also learnt this lesson the hard way. I needed a new tech platform to grow my business but was distracted by the cost of the service. I decided to try to make a 'cheaper' solution work. What I ended up doing was costing myself hundreds of hours, of my very valuable time, on a solution that didn’t solve anything. My biggest mistake was not understanding the value the service would provide me. My patched-up solution failed, and I made the smart decision to purchase the more “costly” service.
Would you like to have us conduct our proprietary 23-point IT systems assessment, so we can help you avoid making a similar big expensive mistake? Complete and submit the form on this page or call our office on (08) 6244 2556.
Not ready for the assessment and want to learn more about how to avoid making big expensive mistakes with technology and how to protect your reputation and family’s livelihood, for your professional services firm? Click here and signup for our free on demand training titled How To Confidently Protect Your Legacy, Reputation and Livelihood Without Having To Stop Practicing Your Profession” In it you’ll discover how to make smart decisions with technology and how to not suffer the devastation and embarrassment of reputation damage due to a cyber-attack.
