Happy New Year! This month, we rang in another new year, the 49th since RCI has been in business! After all this time, is anything really new? Well, in the technology world, the answer to that question is always yes. But likewise, one thing that never changes is that IT experience matters.
In an ever-changing field like IT services, why does experience matter? It’s a valid question. After all, a lot has changed since John Whitcomb was teaching his fellow airmen about computers in the military before leaving to eventually start his own company.
The computers then were the size of a room. And there certainly weren’t any pre-teens spending their time on them! You needed very specialized knowledge and costly equipment.
But two other facts are also self-evident. 1)John, the company he built, and the employees who currently serve the customers on the front lines didn’t stop learning in the 1970s, and 2) the basic training of how to learn and adapt is timeless, even if the knowledge you acquire and master with it isn’t.
What Kind of Experience Does RCI Have?
In nearly five decades, you learn a thing or two about operating a business, and while there’s certainly not enough room in a single blog to share 50 years of IT experience, there are a few key categories of expertise where much of the specific knowledge falls.
Business Experience
Firstly, there’s business experience. Even if you’re a computer whiz, that’s not enough to run a successful business. You also need to be able to manage a business effectively and (in the case of a B2B market) effectively interact with other companies and business owners.
Working with businesses isn’t exactly the same as working directly with consumers. While business owners will typically naturally have more understanding of how a business works, their deadlines are also typically more strident since losing time means losing money.
Since RCI opened in the 1970s, RCI has partnered with thousands of business owners across Virginia, the country, and even the world.
Specialized Knowledge – IT Experience
Of course, the meat of the IT experience that RCI and its employees have gathered in its half a century in business is the specialized knowledge of the systems we sell, build, and maintain.
Telephone Systems
It all began with telephone systems! When John first built RCI, it supplied specialized parts that he engineered from scratch. These parts allowed telephones to do things they were never built for that made running a business much easier.
Over time, though, these features became standard, and eventually, telephones went from being digitally based to IP. However, with systems in the field from the 70s on, RCI needs technicians proficient in everything we’ve installed from the time we opened to today.
How many other companies do you know that have the expertise to work on machines from 50 years ago up to the updates being added to systems today?
Surveillance Systems
Like telephone systems, surveillance systems are basically specialized computers and the cameras that connect to them. However, unlike telephone systems or any other type of IT equipment, to work with surveillance systems, you must be licensed by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services.
That’s because surveillance is meant to keep you safe, so anyone who sells or installs it needs the specialized knowledge to protect your workplace and employees.
Also, like so many of the other types of service we offer, we cover a wide range of surveillance equipment, from old analog to modern IP cameras.
IT and Networking
While computers were a rare site in the early days of RCI, today they’re a staple of every office, and the little ones we carry around in our pockets frequently need to interface with your business telephone system!
Luckily, RCI had the background to easily incorporate servers, networks, and PCs as they’ve become essential to office life. Now, they’re just one of the types of equipment we service.
Cabling
Cabling might seem like an odd item in which to claim specialized knowledge, particularly compared to the complex equipment we’ve already discussed, but anyone who ever had to move a piece of equipment knows that the way the cables were initially run has a significant effect on its future portability.
Cabling affects nearly every piece of IT equipment somewhere along its network journey, so it pays to have the people who service your equipment also have good cabling knowledge.
Customer Service
Finally, customer service is the type of IT experience people most often take for granted. First and foremost, RCI is a service company. And we know that many of the times that we get a call, it’s because you’re already not having a great day!
We treat our customers with respect and understand the value of customer service, completely dispelling the typical stereotype of the unfriendly IT service tech.
New Year, Same IT Experience
Even though you need someone with cutting-edge knowledge to service your IT equipment, that doesn’t mean you don’t need someone with good old-fashioned experience. Luckily, with RCI you don’t have to choose.
