I have a business idea and neeed some advice

DezUk · 11 May 2006 at 00:33

I have been thinking of ways to make money other than the drab 9 to 5 work I do at the moment. I quite fancy the idea of being called out businesses to help fix any technical problems they may have with their computer systems. This is a big part of what i do at the moment in my job but i would prefer the 'on call' style and changing environments and challenges. I'm not quite sure what the technical term for this role is, I am assuming its Computer Maintenance or maybe Technical Consultant ?

Is there much call for this in small to medium type businesses or is there any agencey work avaliable working for other companies as a call out guy to go fix problems ?

Would greatly appreciate any advice on this especially from anyone working in this kind of role at the moment.

Thanks.

HangTime · 11 May 2006 at 01:31

Don't really know much about this in terms of my own experience, but I'd imagine such a role would typically involve varied workloads (and hence income). Might be an idea to target home users as well in the local area.

Tru might have some info for you.

Grrrrr · 11 May 2006 at 02:50

I've been a member here far far too long and i've seen a million of these kinds of threads.

The fact of the matter is for home users they usually ask the geek of the family or failing that they take it to purple uniform land. If they have enough sense to realise that you'll get ripped off at purple uniform land then they are probably competent enough to fix it themselves. Medium and bigger sized businesses will probably have their own IT dept and small businesses i guess you could target but i really doubt you'll get enough business to earn a living from.

Sorry for being so negative!!

Dr House · 11 May 2006 at 07:51

That’s the best response I have seen to a thread like this.
As Grrrrr said I don’t think it will work

phill · 11 May 2006 at 07:59

i work for a company who do the exact same thing (altho we do home call outs as well)

my boss started the business in 99 and there is now five of us int he company. Most of our income comes from regular paying 'maintenance' customers.

GL phill

Zip · 11 May 2006 at 07:59

There is a guy in my town that has a buisness like that.
Im not sure how much he makes but its been going for a few years now

If you want to see what peoples reactions to things like this its best you ask on a forum with no influence of computers like this one.
Go to a forum where people would only know a computer is a box that u can listen to music to and can go online and Pentium is the only processor on the market.
Once you find a forum like that then you will see if they like the idea.
Most people on here know too much about computers to give a propper answer because they will do it them selfs most of the time

crashuk · 11 May 2006 at 09:17

those types of companies pay crap money per hour, i saw an advert for one £5.90 ph after 3 months it goes up by £2, they wanted someone that knew server, exchange, sms, networking and various app.

DezUk · 11 May 2006 at 13:13

There must be ways of getting jobs with companies doing this sort of work that have contracts with big firms and blue chip companies ?

That sort of job would suit me

#Chri5# · 11 May 2006 at 13:22

Paras said:
That’s the best response I have seen to a thread like this.
As Grrrrr said I don’t think it will work

Why not? The business market is quite different to the home market.

The customer base of who I work for covers both companies with and without IT departments. For some customers we are their IT department and look after everything.

A product like SBS 2003 might have a nice wizard to take you through the initial set-up, but once Exchange (or something) falls flat on it's backside, (most) people will pay decent money for somebody to fix it and fix it quickly. If somebody rang up now out of the blue to ask for on-site time, we'd quote them £550 a day which is quite reasonable AIUI.