IT solutions and IT support are two seemingly same terms, but in fact, they should not be confused as there are several differences between them. Unfortunately, due to the fact that both of them are mostly oriented towards helping the costumer, they are often confused. So, in order to help you better understated the difference between these two, here is a short article that might be of some help to you.
IT solutions are also known as “Problem Solving”. It helps the company to find a better solution to the costumer’s problem and has three main parts. It starts with “problem finding”, or finding what the actual problem is. Next part of IT solutions diagnosis is called “problem shaping”, which, in other words, means working on the problem and finalizing it and finally, all of that is done in the third part, “problem solving”, includes actually fixing the problem by finding the best solution for it.
On the other side, IT support is also often referred to as “Tech support” or “Technical support”. In this case, IT support provider offers a service such as assisting and supporting the clients with the IT department and IT equipment, which includes computers, laptops, fax machines, printers and so on. The four main points of IT support include: “dealing with a problem” (solving it with a particular product); providing online or on-site training; customizing a product and providing other services to their costumers, such as allowing them to customize or upgrade a product.
IT support can come in three different types:
Time & Material support is the most often used type of support in the IT industry. It is usually done on the IT company premises and in this case, you as the costumer will have to pay for the material as well as for the time that the technician will be working on the problem.
On-site or 24/7 support is probably the pinnacle of service that the IT support company may provide to your business. It “comes” in two parts. The first one is the On-Call support. What this means is that you will always be able to reach a technician, who will come over to inspect and if possible fix the product. The other part of this is the 24/7 support. If you can find a company that provides a 24/7 IT support, you know that you have made a good choice, believe me.
The third type of IT support is called Block Hours. In this case, the costumer needs to purchase a number of hours (block hours) upfront. Basically, you need to negotiate a discount rate and a certain, fixed number of hours that you can use every month. This is probably the best choice for restaurants and hotels.
To conclude, you can see that these two services may look like they are the same, but there are a lot of differences between them. If I would have to sum them all, I’d say that IT solutions are more personal and IT support is more technical.