Shawinigan

IT services in Shawinigan, from the front office to the shop floor

Shawinigan is 41 km from our office in Trois-Rivières. That is close enough to book a look at a workshop or a server closet the way you would book any other meeting. Everyday support still happens remotely, because that gets you an answer sooner. We have no premises in Shawinigan.

Tell us about your shop On-site technician

OKTO Solutions serves Shawinigan from Trois-Rivières, 41 km away. Office and shop-floor computers are monitored and patched remotely. Cabling, wireless coverage on the production floor and the hardware count are handled during scheduled visits, which take place the same day or the next when one is needed.

Technician connecting a network rack with a tablet in hand, next to the network diagram

Who looks after IT for a Shawinigan business that also runs a workshop?

OKTO Solutions provides managed IT services to small and mid-sized businesses in Shawinigan from its office in Trois-Rivières, 41 km away. The company has no premises and no technician stationed in Shawinigan. Routine work is done remotely: monitoring of workstations and servers, patching, backups, Microsoft 365 account management and help for employees, on weekdays between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. The short distance matters mostly for scheduled visits, which are useful when a business operates a workshop or a production floor alongside its offices. On site, OKTO lists the computers attached to machines, checks cabling and wireless coverage, then separates the production network from the administrative one. Three plans are offered: Base, Standard and Complet. For an outage that halts everything outside those hours there is an emergency line, which is part of the Complet plan.

Being close

Why visit at all when nearly everything can be fixed remotely?

A locked account, a sulking printer, an update that went sideways: none of it needs a car. Our tools sit on your devices and a technician can take over the machine remotely. Driving over for that kind of request would only keep you waiting.

Some things, though, do not show up on a screen. A network cabinet where nobody remembers which cable goes where. An access point bolted too close to an overhead crane. An old PC forgotten under a workbench that happens to run the label printer. Those call for someone on the floor with a flashlight and a notebook. At 41 km, we bundle that work into one visit, announced ahead of time, so production does not have to stop while we are there.

A scheduled visit shows up with its work order: what to connect, what to label, what to test.

When a technician comes on site IT support

Two environments, one network

Office equipment and floor equipment age differently

In the office, a laptop gets swapped every few years and nobody blinks. In the shop, the PC strapped to a machine tends to stay as long as the machine does. Treat both the same way and you get breakdowns on one side or security gaps on the other.

Topic	Office side	Shop side
Updates	Applied remotely, without waiting to be asked	Booked with the production lead, never mid-shift
Replacement	Follows a schedule known in advance	Depends on the software the machine maker supplies
Network	Workstations, printers, phones, guest wireless	Its own segment, with no direct path to accounting or email
Accounts	One per person, with two-step sign-in	Stations shared across shifts, governed by a written rule
Backup	Files and mail in Microsoft 365	Machine programs and settings, often on a single USB key

Splitting the two networks is part of managed cybersecurity. Copies of machine programs are added to the backup and recovery plan, with a dated restore test.

The method

Where do you start when the plant network just grew on its own?

In many shops, IT was built one device at a time, as machines were bought. Nobody did anything wrong. What is missing is the overall picture. We rebuild it in this order.

A first walk-through. Every connected device gets written down, including the ones nobody thought to mention.
A one-page network map. What talks to what, through which switch, and where the internet comes in.
Machine PCs moved to their own segment, so a booby-trapped email opened at reception cannot reach the floor.
A copy of each machine’s programs and recipes, stored somewhere other than the shop.
Shared logins replaced or governed, with a written rule on who may open what.
A replacement calendar presented to management, so the next expense is not a surprise.

What the walk-through does not do. It changes nothing on a production machine without the say-so of the person responsible for it. The equipment maker remains in charge of its software; our job is to protect what surrounds it. Longer-range planning goes through the vCIO module.

Before any number is quoted, each inventory line goes from “to check” to an actual count.

Before the quote

Why count devices before talking about a plan?

Because the figure given from memory is nearly always too low. People remember the office laptops. They rarely remember the punch clock terminal, the foreman’s tablet or the PC in the paint room. A plan built on a wrong count leaves devices unmonitored, and those are the ones that fail.

The inventory also records the age and condition of each device. With that in hand, choosing between Base, Standard and Complet becomes a conversation about facts. Base monitors, protects and backs up. Standard adds user support and maintenance of workstations and servers. Complet adds advanced security and the emergency line.

Compare Base, Standard and Complet How we build a quote

The territory

A Mauricie city created by the 2002 amalgamation

Shawinigan had 49,620 residents at the 2021 census. Today’s city dates from January 1, 2002, when several neighbouring municipalities, Grand-Mère and Shawinigan-Sud among them, were merged. For a business, that sometimes means two addresses inside one city.

Trois-Rivières

Our office is there, and visits to Shawinigan leave from it.

Mauricie

The regional page describes the service across Mauricie, beyond its two main cities.

Bécancour

Across the river, for industrial park suppliers who have to prove their security measures.

Every city we cover is listed on the service areas page. For a small team with no IT person, see our services in Nicolet.

Nearby areas

IT services in Louiseville

Questions and answers

Your questions about our services in Shawinigan

Do you travel to Shawinigan?

Yes, by appointment. Shawinigan is 41 km from our Trois-Rivières office, so a visit fits into a normal working day: a walk through the shop, a new access point, a switch replacement, a sit-down with management. Between visits, your systems are looked after through our remote management tools.

Is there an OKTO office in Shawinigan?

No. OKTO Solutions has a single address, in Trois-Rivières, and nobody is stationed in Shawinigan. People ask often enough that we would rather answer it plainly here.

Our shop has old PCs wired to machines. Will you touch them?

We start by listing them and changing nothing. A PC that drives a machine usually follows the equipment maker’s schedule, not the Windows one. We record what it does, what it connects to and who is responsible for it. Then we decide with you whether it should be isolated from the office network, replaced, or left alone and monitored.

How soon can someone be on site after a breakdown?

Diagnosis starts remotely as soon as the request comes in, and that settles most breakdowns. When someone has to come to you, a visit to Shawinigan or Grand-Mère happens the same day or the next. We tell you on the first call and agree on a time. We do not publish a response target in minutes.

What if something fails on the evening shift?

Our normal hours are 8 to 5 on weekdays. In the evening, the emergency line picks up any outage capable of stopping the plant. The Complet plan comes with it. A plant that runs evenings should settle that point before signing.

Do you also cover Grand-Mère and Shawinigan-Sud?

Yes. Both former towns have been part of the city of Shawinigan since the amalgamation of January 1, 2002, and the service is identical there: remote management day to day, visits by appointment.

Tell us about your office and your shop in Shawinigan

How many computers in administration, how many on the floor, and what worries you most. We then set a date for a first visit.

Reviewed by Antonio Pazzi, president of OKTO Solutions · updated October 2, 2026