His company designs, manufactures and markets three-dimensional digitizing systems for industrial applications. Those each have a personal computer. If technical issues arise, repair could be challenging because not all end-users have well staffed IT groups, he says. Too, troubleshooting by telephone is difficult.
Enter ComputerRepair.com. Aubrey found the company through a Web search for outsourced computer support. “I was originally thinking of one company with employees around the country, but couldn’t find one that did that,” he recalls. He’s now able to schedule a technician at a customer’s site, usually the same day.
The Boca Raton, Fla.-headquartered ComputerRepair.com (www.computerrepair.com) brings transparency and visibility to the IT service supply chain, explains Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Leventhal, from his New York City office. The company maintains a Web-based network of locally owned, third-party service providers in the United States. “Our proposition (for service providers) is straightforward: Sign up and we’re going to send you business,” he declares.
Rather than the traditional tiered work-order model, in which work orders can change hands as many as five times, Leventhal created a Web-based transaction model. It lets clients create work orders and put them directly into technicians’ pockets. That produces savings. “A day doesn’t go by that we don’t hear from a client reporting they’ve saved 30 percent to 50 percent on a work order,” he says.
Virtual IT support
The company is a virtual extension of Aubrey’s company. He asserts that it doesn’t matter what needs repair—hardware, printer, anything—the customer doesn’t need a maintenance contract with a manufacturer, because the technician finds the part. All the customer does is report the problem, states Aubrey. “The next thing he knows, a technician shows up to solve it.”
Most clients are also service providers, Leventhal notes. Many people don’t realize that every major IT service company, from IBM to the smallest, uses third-party IT services, he says. “On one hand, they’re registering their technicians with us and receiving business. And on the other, they’re using us to cover their white space, when they don’t have enough technicians and they need help.”
Payment is electronic. Clients set up their accounts on ComputerRepair’s Web site, establish a budget and don’t pay unless they’re completely satisfied. That occurs 99.7 percent of the time, says Leventhal. He tracks those numbers daily, through a six-question survey customers complete and submit at the end of a job.
End-users benefit in this ready-made, paperless labor market, Leventhal emphasizes. “It used to be cool to say you had 20,000 technicians. Today, you’d look silly because your overhead and infrastructure costs would be too high to compete.” Clients may have as many at 80 technicians, or more, on their payrolls, he says. When they register with his company, they start receiving service calls daily. “We simply connect buyers and sellers.”
That’s why ShapeGrabber’s Aubrey chose ComputerRepair. It has done a great job in implementing its functional Web site, with technicians logging in with reports of jobs’ status, Aubrey says. “We can get up-to-the-minute status of the repair over the Web. This concept works great for us—I look like a hero. It’s as if I had a technician in every U.S. city.”
C. Kenna Amos, [email protected], is an Automation World Contributing Editor.
