Lizzie O'Grady

London

Director

Hooray for highlighting the plight of Small IT companies.

I have worked in both Public and private sectors.

Whilst working in Small/Medium sized private companies, if anything goes wrong in IT or ICT applications and you are dealing with a small supplier - the problem is sorted. They understand the importance of good customer service, and how downtime = loss of production and impacts on your business costs. They know you can dismiss them at any time if they mess you about.

Whilst working in Colleges and local goverment - if your IT goes down, on average its a 6 month wait for the system to be put right. A recent example in London meant that a large incompetant IT company lost all the files belonging to students sitting on the college server. If you wonder why departments like the immigration service is having trouble, and your council tax bills are consistantly wrong - its generally not always the fault of the civil servant - its more than likely the IT system they have been mis-sold,and not doing the job they said it would do. Then, when you complain about the amount of downtime, suddenly you are told to look at the small print in their support service. Look how many IT setups the Government has had to scrap over thepast few years costing millions.

Time and time again these companies get rehired to run services because the IT procurement officer is unwilling to take risks with small local providers who are willing to offer cheaper and a more customer friendly service, they go for the big name because all the other councils also use them, usually without looking through contracts first (averaging up to 90 pages long)

The other reason for using small companies is of course, sustainability. Supporting local companies is good for local communities no matter what sector you need to buy in from.