Business Model

“They are very familiar with the situation here. They know what works, they know the people here, and it almost feels like they’re a member of our own company. In fact, our newest employees are a little surprised to find out that they’re actually an outsourced IT provider.”

- Martin Fraser, IT Director, Hillsdale Investment

Depth of Relationship

The depth of our relationship is flexible. We can empower your in-house or external support teams, or work with your head office IT department. Alternatively, we can be your IT department, managing all IT-related issues and providing backbone infrastructure support. We pride ourselves on being able to work well with outside organizations, and we have a large number of affiliate specialists that we can get involved, if required.

Polarized Service: Strong Local, Strong Central

On-site staff are supported by our Help Desk, server & network monitoring, after-hours emergency response and other features. They are also supported by our Network, Telephony, Server and Project specialists who provide technical backup and are available for special projects as required. We call it “polarized service” (strong local/strong central) and it reduces your IT costs and risks.

Service Agreements

Our service agreements are multiple year commitments. We start with an orientation period, where the specifics of the contracts can be confirmed, renegotiated or cancelled if required. Contracts typically have price erosion clauses built in, and we regularly review and modify contract terms to suit changing needs and technologies.

Our flat-fee monthly retainers vary depending on the number of services and the required service levels. For example, companies with manageable downtime costs get modified service level response guarantees, and pay lower fees than other organizations.

We can tailor our service levels to match the requirements of most businesses. For example, our guarantees for on-site response time vary from 20 minutes to next-day service.

Quarterly Reports

On a regular basis, you can be given a complete report detailing where your money went, what issues you experienced and any recommendations we may have. This will allow you to recognize any reoccurring problems and deal with them. This creates greater efficiencies for both parties.

This also helps for any ongoing changes your organization might undergo in the near future. If we’re kept appraised of any major developments or plans, there will be few IT-related surprises. We make sure that your IT capabilities meet your business needs. It works the other way as well. We can suggest business processes that take advantage of your new IT environment.

Collaboration & Communication

We have collaborative, open and frequent communication with our clients.

An example of client collaboration on IT development is our private WAN that connects over twenty office towers in the GTA. The inconsistent internet speed of the public internet was disrupting client-hosted applications and there was greater need for security and control. We designed a built a private network for our clients that overcame these problems. Various technical services are delivered over this network. Quartet also supplies IT infrastructure services to companies off its WAN.