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Saint-Jérôme

IT services in Saint-Jérôme: a three-year plan instead of breakdowns

A server that dies in the middle of July. Twelve laptops bought the same year that all slow down together. A licence that renewed without anyone noticing. None of it is bad luck: it was written in the age of the hardware. OKTO Solutions puts those dates on paper for SMBs in Saint-Jérôme, working from Trois-Rivières, about 164 km away.

Talk about your plan The master plan in detail
Advisor presenting a strategic plan on a laptop and a tablet to a client

A three-year IT plan tells a Saint-Jérôme SMB what to replace, in which year and at what cost. OKTO Solutions builds it from the real inventory of the fleet, staggers purchases across several fiscal years and reviews it at the strategic meetings of the vCIO module. The work is run from Trois-Rivières, about 164 km away.

How can a Saint-Jérôme SMB make its IT spending predictable?

A small or mid-sized business in Saint-Jérôme that is tired of paying top dollar for breakdowns needs a calendar before it needs a technician. OKTO Solutions builds that calendar as a three-year IT master plan: the actual list of workstations, servers and network equipment with their age, replacements divided from one year to the next, the order of projects and the spending expected in each fiscal year. The plan keeps yearly recurring costs apart from one-time purchases so it fits into a budget that already exists. It belongs to the vCIO module, an add-on to a managed services plan starting at ten workstations or servers, and it is reviewed at strategic meetings held semi-annually or quarterly depending on the level. The work is led from Trois-Rivières, about 164 km from Saint-Jérôme, remotely and on site when the mandate calls for it. OKTO has no office there and no technician stationed in town.

The diagnosis

What does reactive IT sound like?

You do not need an audit to find out. Three sentences come up in companies that spend in fits and starts, and you have probably said one of them.

“We will replace it when it breaks”

That is a strategy, except it picks the date for you. The replacement then lands at the worst time, with no quotes to compare and no budget line.

“We bought everything at once”

Workstations bought in the same year age in the same year. The bill that follows piles into a single fiscal year, and servers, switches and the firewall follow the same cycle.

“Martin knows about that”

When fleet age, contracts and renewal dates live in one person’s memory, the plan walks out the door with that person. Writing it down removes the risk.

None of these situations means buying something tomorrow morning. They call for a list first. The full approach is laid out on the three-year IT master plan page.

The principle

Why stagger replacements instead of absorbing them?

Hardware is bought in waves, and waves come back. A company that equipped its whole team in one go will face the same expense a few years later, in one block, at a time it did not choose.

Staggering means deciding ahead of time that part of the fleet is replaced this year, another part next year and the rest the year after, grouping what belongs together. The number of devices stays the same. What changes is that no single year carries the whole load.

Three years is long enough to cover a renewal cycle and short enough for the assumptions to hold. Past that point, it is guesswork.

The same number of devices, first packed into one quarter, then distributed over three years.

The vCIO module Managed IT services

The document

What is in the plan handed to management?

A few pages, six parts. Each one answers a question management is already asking without the numbers to settle it.

  1. Inventory and age of the fleet. Workstations, servers, network equipment and software, with their condition and the date the vendor stops supporting them.
  2. The replacement calendar. How many devices to change per year so there is never a wall to climb.
  3. Projects and their order. Some jobs depend on others. The plan says which comes first and which can safely wait.
  4. The budget by year. Recurring costs on one side, one-time investments on the other, in a format that drops into your current budget.
  5. Risks to address. Known weaknesses and what they lead to if nothing is done, compliance obligations included.
  6. Dependencies. Contracts, their end dates, and the places where the business rests on a single vendor, a single application or a single person.
Something to try this week. Ask whoever looks after IT in your company what year the server was bought and when its warranty ends. If the answer takes more than a day, the first part of the plan has already earned its place.

The finances

How does next year’s budget become known ahead of time?

The plan is built in four stages. It starts with the business, not the machines: planned hires, a new location, a change of management software, a requirement from an insurer. Then comes the real state of the fleet. Each item gets a priority based on its effect on operations and its risk, and then a year. The result is presented to management and adjusted to what is realistic for them.

Once that is done, an urgent request no longer gets stacked on top of everything else. It is weighed against what was already planned, and something moves back if it jumps the line. End-of-support dates are seen coming. A security investment is argued from a named risk, not from a worry.

The plan is useful outside the company too: it helps management explain its choices to a board, an insurer or the bank.

Work items settle into three years, and spending in each one stays close to the others.

The ground

Saint-Jérôme, about 164 km from Trois-Rivières

Saint-Jérôme is part of the La Rivière-du-Nord regional county municipality, in the Laurentides administrative region. The Rivière du Nord runs through the city, which is served by Autoroute 15.

OKTO Solutions offers its services to SMBs in Saint-Jérôme without a storefront there. Fleet monitoring, support and follow-up on the plan all run out of our Trois-Rivières office. At that distance we are not going to promise a technician at your door, and a three-year plan is precisely what reduces the need for one: a planned replacement is prepared, ordered and installed by appointment.

A plan does not carry itself out. Monitoring, patching and backups belong to the Base, Standard and Complet plans, and the vCIO module is added on top at one of three levels: Essentiel, Standard and Stratégique. They are two separate ranges. If you are still weighing which provider to pick, the IT partner for SMBs page explains what we mean by that, and our contact page is the quickest way to reach us.

Nearby areas

IT services in the Laurentians IT services in Mirabel IT services in Mont-Tremblant IT services in Terrebonne All service areas

Questions and answers

Your questions about an IT plan in Saint-Jérôme

What does a three-year IT plan change for a Saint-Jérôme SMB?
It turns surprise spending into budgeted spending. The plan states which devices are reaching end of life, which year they get replaced, and what each fiscal year has to set aside. A failure can still happen, but it rarely hits a device whose age nobody knew.
Do we have to be an OKTO client already to get a master plan?
The master plan is part of the vCIO module, which is added to a managed IT plan and requires a minimum of ten workstations or servers. The Complet plan also includes an IT master plan with a roadmap. If the planning exercise is all you want, say so and we will tell you plainly whether our model fits.
Does the plan give actual amounts?
Yes, though not on this website. The amounts are worked out with you during the mandate, from your real fleet. The plan splits spending by year and separates recurring costs from one-time investments, so you can carry it straight into your own budget.
Our equipment has never been inventoried. Where do we start?
With the inventory itself. Our cybersecurity audit for SMBs already produces much of the information on the fleet, the access and the backups. The plan picks up those findings and places them in time. When nothing is documented, that step makes the schedule longer, and we tell you before starting.
How often is the plan reviewed?
At every strategic meeting set out in the vCIO module. They are semi-annual at the Standard level and quarterly at the Stratégique level. At the Essentiel level, the plan and a basic roadmap are included and the meetings are billed as used.
Will you come to Saint-Jérôme to present the plan?
The presentation to management can happen on site or remotely, depending on what the mandate sets out. Our only office is in Trois-Rivières, about 164 km away. We have no premises and no technician stationed in Saint-Jérôme, and we do not advertise any travel time.

Let us put your Saint-Jérôme fleet on a calendar

Tell us how many workstations and servers you have, and what year the oldest ones were bought. We will tell you what a three-year plan would change for you.

Contact us

Reviewed by , president of OKTO Solutions · updated