Fixing Tech Troubles Before They Happen

Excerpt from The StarPhoenix
By Ashleigh Mattern

WBM Office Systems provides technology solutions to businesses. They provide support, advice and guidance in setting up and maintaining printing and computer infrastructure.

Like many information technology companies, that also includes emergency troubleshooting when something invariably goes wrong. But unlike other IT companies, WBM is aiming to stop problems before they even happen.

They’re working on building three “infrastructure operation centres,” in Regina, Saskatoon and Calgary. Construction is just wrapping up on the first infrastructure operation centre, or IOC, in Regina.

Vice-president Brett Bailey says these centres would be like “NASA mission control: a theatre room with huge screens, only instead of remotely managing and monitoring a space craft, we’re remotely managing and monitoring our clients’ IT.”

Imagine you’re in the field, working on a laptop, and it crashes. When you take it to your tech company, they explain that the fan failed and the computer overheated. WBM envisions a service where that crash wouldn’t have happened because the employees in the IOC would have been able to proactively fix the fan.

“Instead of finding out about issues because they’re broken, we can go tell them how many issues they avoided.”

Although WBM has been in business since 1950, they only first cracked the Top 100 list last year. This year, they sit at number 99.

But many of their clients are at the top of the list, like SaskPower, Viterra and PotashCorp, among others.

“They’re really pulling us up the list and we’re certainly not going to fight it,” said Bailey.”We’re focused on investing hard to become a great partner for them.”

Innovations like their IOCs are part of the reason the company has been doing well lately, but Bailey says in recent years, there’s been a huge shift in vision for the company.

Recently, they partnered with Apple, securing over 150 technical certifications, and investing heavily in mobile technologies.