Guidant Partners

Flat Fee IT Services

Gone are the days when the mere presence of Information Technology (IT) represented a competitive business advantage. IT is now a vital element in business and must deliver more value and contribute to the achievement of strategic business goals. Regardless of the size of your organization, IT has a powerful influence on productivity and profitability.

The purpose of IT is to automate and accelerate business processes. In today's information driven economy, how well you Receive, Process and Manage the flow of information determines your financial success. The less time to complete a task - the more profit generated.

After all ... Time is Money.

Guidant Partners understands that if your business is dependent on IT, then the traditional "break/fix" model of paying to fix problems when they occur just does not work. Businesses are learning that paying for "uptime" makes more sense.

Our clients cannot afford to be down. That is why Guidant Partners created our Flat Fee IT approach.

Under the traditional IT service model, the IT service provider makes money when your systems are broken. When the "service vans roll - they make money". Where is the incentive in this model to make sure your systems are always functioning properly? Is your uptime their priority?

Our Flat Fee IT model aligns your uptime goal and our revenue needs. We guarantee to provide all of your IT services for a fixed monthly fee. If your systems are broken, Guidant is responsible for "paying the bill". For Guidant to be profitable, we have to make sure your systems are always maintained and optimized.

In order to ensure your uptime and to make sure your business is not at risk because of IT, Guidant Partners provides the following services: 


8x5 Unlimited Onsite Network Support

Should our telephone support desk not be able to resolve the problem remotely, your issue will be escalated to our Level 2 Support. If needed, our staff will come on-site to address the problem at no additional fee. We provide you with a service level agreement to define our response times.  

24x7x365 Unlimited Server Support

Should a server fail, we will provide 24x7x365 on-site recovery support at no additional fee. Under our proactive IT service model, we take on all the risk and incur the cost if our clients experience problems.  

Proactive Preventative Maintenance and System Monitoring

Guidant Partners proactively monitors and maintains your servers and workstations. We monitor the health of your systems to ensure that security patches are applied, malware protection software is installed and updated, hard drives are optimized, and there are no performance constraints caused by hard drives, memory, or processor utilization. The maintenance work is done behind the scenes or after hours so you are not inconvenienced.  

Critical Service Monitoring and Restarting

There should be planned times for your systems to be restarted. There are critical software services that may not restart, prohibiting users from properly accessing systems. Our systems detect services not properly restarted and make all attempts to restart the service. If the system does not restart, we will remotely log into the system and make all attempts to manually restart the service. If necessary, we will dispatch on-site to restart the service. No additional charge. 

Data Backup and Disaster Recovery Planning

Guidant Partners provides a dual layer approach to data backup. We place a backup device on-site that "mirrors" your servers. A complete image of the drive is maintained and can be updated every 15 minutes. We don't just back up your data at the end of the day. It's backed up throughout the day, and backed up to a secure off-site data center every night. Should there be an office disaster, you have a complete copy of all your data and applications off-site that can quickly be restored to a new server to make sure your business is functioning in a new temporary location ASAP. Should you have a server failure; Guidant Partners can convert the backup device into a functioning server. All programs and data that were located on the failed server are now accessible on the backup device. Should you loose a server, there is no additional fee to restore the data or rebuild the servers. 

Security Services

Network Security has never been more critical than it is today. If your company is on the Internet, you are at risk. You cannot afford to let down your guard. Our solution includes multiple levels of defense.

Managed Firewall
Too many businesses just plug in the firewall and think it will provide the protection they need. Nothing could be further from the truth. Firewalls must be constantly maintained and updated to protect against new "hacks" and vulnerabilities.

Intrusion Prevention Systems and Malware Protection
Hackers have become much more sophisticated. They have learned how to disguise their attacks within legitimate Internet traffic such as web browsing and email. All internet traffic into and out of a business should be examined for these hidden attacks before it ever gets to your servers or workstations.

Content Filtering
Unfortunately, not all Internet use has a legitimate business need. Non-business related Internet use cost businesses a tremendous amount of money. We provide you with the ability to limit how your staff uses the Internet. You can block web-sites (e-Bay, Facebook), types of activity (gambling, pornography), streaming audio/video, music sharing sites, etc. The NCAA's 15 days of March Madness alone is expected to cost U.S. businesses $1.4B in lost productivity this year from employees streaming and following games at the office.

Complete Hardware/Software Solutions

Workstations and Servers
Guidant Partners can provide you with workstations and servers for a flat monthly fee. There are no up front purchase fees or lease agreements.

Microsoft Software Licenses
On the workstations and servers provided by Guidant, Microsoft provides you the ability to pay for the software as you go versus all up front. Under this arrangement, you always have access to the most current version of the software. For example when a new version of Windows is released, you can upgrade at no additional fee (software or labor). Want to upgrade a server from Windows 2003 to 2008 - no additional fee. Office 2007 to Office 2010 - no fee.

Parts and Labor for Life of Contract
Whether Guidant Partners provided you with the workstation or server or you purchased it from HP or Dell, we provide all parts and labor required to repair the device in question at no additional charge.

Automatic Hardware Upgrade
All workstations provided by Guidant Partners are automatically replaced every three years. All servers are automatically replaced at the end of four years. We ensure your systems remain up to date and that your network is always operating at optimum speed. All data is transferred to new workstations and servers at no additional fee.

Professional Services

Vendor Management
Working with all of your different technology providers is a time consuming responsibility. We can perform this duty for you. Whether it is your current phone vendor, circuit provider, copier repair, fax machine, software vendor, etc. If you need to make a change or have a problem with a product or service, Guidant Partners will handle the problem/request.

Project Management
Guidant Partners will provide a detail project plan and project manager to work with you as we install and configure your new equipment.

Project Implementation Labor
Guidant Partners provides all the labor to install and configure all the new network equipment. We eliminate the upfront labor costs traditionally associated with data projects.

Professional Staff
Guidant Partners ensures IT works in your business. We have a staff of highly trained, experienced staff to serve you. We are proud of our staff and make all efforts to retain them. All of our staff members are full-time employees - we do not use part-time or temps. We provide a full package of benefits including life/health/vision/dental insurance, 401-k with match, minimum 2 weeks of vacation, paid holidays and personal days, all in an effort to attract and retain the best talent available.

Technology Savings Analysis