SYGNVS Integrated Solutions

For nearly 40 years, SYGNVS (pronounced “Sig-Nus”) Integrated Solutions has provided businesses and organizations in the public and private sectors in Louisiana with cutting edge solutions to accounting, financial management, and IT issues. The solution provider offers a wide array of IT and business services including system reviews, work flow management services, installation services, technical support, report design, external application integration, server and desktop support, managed IT services, and training clients to use financial, document management and back office applications.

Betty Bruce is the director of operations for SYGNVS, managing the company’s professional services team and overseeing all hardware and software sales and marketing. If there’s one lesson she’s learned over the years, it’s that IT professionals and small to midsize business owners have differing views on technology and its importance in the workplace. “IT solution providers tend to use lots of technical terms and acronyms when talking with clients, which only confuses them,” she says. Through her involvement in various community outreach programs and associations, such as the St. Tammany Professional Women’s Association, she’s learned to be mindful of this disconnect. “One person I spoke with confessed that she had no idea what it meant when I said I was an IT consultant. She told me, ‘You’re just the person I call when my computer breaks.’”

Simplify Your BDR Strategy

An MSP’s initial conversation with prospects almost always covers the topic of data backup and recovery (and if it doesn’t, it should). Since August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc along the Gulf Coast and New Orleans, it’s been top of mind for many Louisiana companies. SYGNVS’ BDR strategy has evolved significantly over the past 12 years, becoming more comprehensive and at the same time simpler to sell and manage. For example, a few years ago, the IT solution provider replaced its legacy on-site backup solution with Barracuda Intronis Backup - MSP.

“We didn’t have an automated offsite backup solution prior to switching to Barracuda MSP,” says Bruce. “We used to perform local backups using external USB drives, but that proved to be unreliable and tedious. The USB drives would lose connection from time to time causing backups to fail, and our technicians were constantly troubleshooting the drives. Plus, Microsoft Exchange and SQL backups were error-prone. After switching to Barracuda Intronis Backup all these problems went away. All our backups can be managed from an online portal, and if there’s ever a problem, we can choose to have Barracuda MSP resolve it (part of Managed Backup Services, a complementary service to Barracuda Intronis Backup), so our staff can focus on other projects.”

Another problem that went away after switching to Barracuda MSP was ransomware horror stories, she says. “Just prior to making the switch, we were starting to see a newer strain of the CryptoLocker virus that was encrypting our customers’ local backup files. Barracuda Intronis Backup eliminates this threat by disconnecting from the network when it’s not in use.”

Help Customers Understand Their Need for BDR

Barracuda MSP has helped SYGNVS in other ways, too, says Bruce. For example, at a recent SYGNVS customer conference, a Barracuda MSP subject matter expert educated the audience about the importance of data protection, and he gave attendees a quiz about avoiding phishing attacks. “After the presentation, five people followed up with our team and agreed to have our company back up their data,” says Bruce. “Not every customer is ready to have us back up all their data when we first engage them. We tell them, ‘We don’t have to be your IT department, but you at least need to get your accounting data and any other mission-critical data backed up to the cloud.’”

SYGNVS’ goal this year is to ramp up its BDR marketing throughout its parish, so it can get more customers on a managed services plan. “Barracuda MSP's marketing literature and support will play a key role in our success, and they’ve already helped us hone in on the right message,” she says. “The one question that resonates with any customer or prospect is, ‘If you lost your data today, how much would you pay to get it back?’ This question gets them thinking about the value of their data instead of focusing on finding the cheapest software. Anyone who’s ever been in a situation where they couldn’t open a file because it was encrypted by ransomware realizes that a cheap backup strategy isn’t cheap in the long run. Using affordable solutions and services like Barracuda Intronis Backup and Managed Backup Services to protect your business from server crashes, viruses, fires, and floods is by far the smarter choice.”