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Palius & O'Kelley LLP
Certified Public Accountants
To Whom It May Concern:
Over the past seven years we have worked with three technology service
providers. CIO Solutions is by far and away the most knowledgeable and
competent. They provide a full range of services from consulting to
hardware procurement and implementation. Their engineers are trained to
work with the customer in a comprehensive manner that is more akin to what one
would expect from an in-house CIO as opposed to service one usually receives
from an outside contractor. Let me share some personal examples with you.
First, a thumbnail sketch or our company's computing scenario. We are a
medium size firm of certified public accountants. Our LAN services eight
computers plus our server and we are working on implementation of a
telecommuting option for some team members. We access the Internet via
DSL. It is customary for technicians to believe that accountants are far
from power users of their computers. This is far from the truth in a
modern firm. In addition to the Microsoft family of software, we use ten
other software packages to assist us in performing our daily work. These
packages range from our practice management package to our tax preparation and
tax research software as well as the software we use in the management
consulting and valuation services we provide. License fess on the
accounting software approaches $10,000 a year. So obviously it is critical
that our system works at peak performance.
When we first engaged CIO they convinced us to allow them to perform a needs
assessment. This was an excellent value because they had a pictorial
benchmark of our system. It allowed them to focus on some immediate flaws
in our system. We had no firewall and worse yet, we had woefully
inadequate virus protection. After this was remedied, they began to work
on the overall performance of the system. They upgraded our switch to
improve overall LAN speed and also were able to upgrade performance on
individual computers.
Our previous technology provider had moved our of the hardware business and I
mistakenly thought that CIO had as well. We brought in another provider
for hardware upgrades to our desktops. What a mistake! Not only did
CIO have to clean up their errors, they would have provided the same service for
less money. I made the same mistake the second time with printers. I
didn't realize the CIO could sell us HP printers. I purchased some
printers from yet another provider who was not capable of providing service past
the sale. He had no idea how we could share the printers on the network!
All I can say is that thank goodness our CIO tech was at my office that day.
He prevented me from having a total meltdown by explaining how our current
technology could be used to accomplish the sharing task. So, when we were
required to purchase new computers to accommodate our expansion, I did not
hesitate to order them from CIO. Our new computer are terrific!
However, I have saved the best for last. The engineers at CIO are the best
I have dealt with. Beside their technical competence, which I believe
should be a given, they have the ability to look beyond the current issues and
develop a technology plan for the company. Our engineer is very proactive.
He takes it upon himself to set up appointments where he presents his vision for
our technology plan for the next six months to a year. He is always
looking for faster and less expensive ways to accomplish our computing tasks.
He introduces us to new technology concepts that are available. We may not
always be ready to implement, but taking the time to do this saves us time in
the long run, because we have a better idea of opportunities we could take
advantage of for our business. He has the capacity to hear what is going
on and can explain increasingly complicated issues to us in plain English.
So, in summary, we are very happy with our relationship with CIO Solutions and
recommend them highly to any firm that is ready to accept their level of service
and professionalism. If you would like to discuss any of this further,
please do not hesitate to contact me!
Best regards,
Maeda J. Palius
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