Resources

Kinetic IT Solutions is an IT solutions provider based in Kanab, Utah. It was formed and is managed by myself, Craig Baird. At this point in time, I am the sole owner and employee of the company. If you want to know more, see the About page.

Although Kinetic’s services are primarily intended for businesses, I also provide service to residential customers. It’s worth mentioning, however, that I do have priority agreements with some businesses. These agreements give them priority in case of emergencies. While such occurrences should be rare, I may occasionally have to reschedule appointments for residences or businesses that do not have priority agreements so I can attend to these emergencies.

No. And yes… Sort of. I can provide needed equipment to my clients, but I do not sell it to them. The client has the option of either purchasing the equipment themselves, or I can purchase it for them, in which case, I bill the client for a reimbursement. I do not mark up pricing on equipment, which is why I say I don’t sell it. Let me explain: I prefer to operate under the pretense that I am your hired IT guy. Large companies hire entire departments of IT personnel to maintain and manage their systems. When you hire me, either as part of a priority service plan, or just for a single service call, I become your IT guy for the time you schedule me. If an IT employee for a large company were to try to mark up every piece of equipment he bought on behalf of his employer, he wouldn’t have a job for very long. I see this in the same way. You hire me and pay me for my time to do what’s in your best interest. Therefore, I cannot mark up equipment I procure for you because it violates that principal. So in summary. I can get equipment for you. If I do, you simply reimburse what it cost me. Nothing more, nothing less.

At present, I do not maintain a storefront. Virtually all of the business I conduct is in the form of service calls, which occur at the homes or businesses of my clients. Therefore Kinetic really does not require a storefront. If you’re having trouble with your computer (or another device), I will come to your home or place of business to look at it. This is often a better option than bringing it to me anyway, since this allows me to look at the device in the environment where it’s having trouble. Sometimes problems are not as much the fault of the device as the environment they are in.

Be advised that in some circumstances—most often in the case of operating system problems, or virus/malware removal—I may decide it would make the most sense to take the computer with me to repair on my workbench. The reason for this is that these sorts of repairs often require a lot of time waiting for the computer to perform tasks. For example, virus/malware scanning can sometimes take hours to complete if there are a lot of files or if the computer is very slow. However, almost all of that time is wait time, where I’m doing nothing but waiting on the computer to finish what it’s doing. On my workbench, I can work on multiple computers simultaneously. While I’m waiting on one to finish something, I can work on another one. This minimizes the time required to complete the fix for all the machines on the bench, and saves you lots of money because I don’t have to charge you for time while I’m just sitting there waiting on the computer.

I bill clients an hourly rate based on the time it takes to complete the work required. When I started Kinetic I pondered on what would be the best method for billing clients. Most companies in this market niche have moved to billing clients standardized monthly rates based on either the number of employees a client has ($X per employee per month), or the number of devices a client has ($X per computer per month + $X per printer per month + $X per network switch per month etc.). Under these models, you wind up paying the monthly charge even if the IT company does absolutely nothing for you in a given month. While this model probably works well for larger cities and larger businesses, I’m not convinced it’s a good fit for our small-town market. Therefore, I have chosen not to move in this direction.

So, I keep it simple, and just bill for my time. Now in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that Kinetic does have some priority service plans, geared toward businesses, that do include a monthly recurring charge. However, these recurring charges are always accompanied by the equivalent amount of service. In other words, if a business is on a priority service plan where they pay $100 per month, there will not be a month that goes by where I don’t provide $100 worth of IT services, either on site, or remotely. I also provide to that business an accounting of all work performed. 

In short, You only pay me if I do something for you.