SOFIns allows technical experts to standardize and automate their delivery of IT services in order to sell their services:
to customers in new locations
more frequently than current time-based delivery permits
at a lower price to end users, but at a higher margin for the expert
The current working relationship between technology providers and purchasers is inefficient and limiting for the provider and frustrating and risky for the purchaser. These flaws arise when the providers require knowledge of the purchaser’s site-specific or confidential information and manually deliver time-based services.
Confusion of Roles
When an Expert, typically a technical support representative providing assistance to a User by telephone, asks a User to perform technical tasks, there is a confusion of roles.
In the current working relationship between Experts and Users, this type of confusion is unavoidable because the Expert must collect information to help diagnose the problem and the User must take actions on the remote computer to apply the Expert’s requests.
Users may not apply these instructions correctly nor provide correct information to the Expert. This results in misdiagnoses by the Expert and frustration for the User.
No Assurance of Expert’s Skills or Solution’s Quality
A User is generally unable to rate the technical quality of an Expert’s work, as by definition a User is a non-technical individual.
While the required functionality may exist, the service’s delivery may have been flawed. Such flaws would not appear immediately. Flaws in design and implementation appear when a system is compromised due to security lapses or when a User is unable to modify or upgrade the system due to design defects.
Reputation and referrals provide the User with some gauge of an Expert’s skill or assurance of a solution’s quality, but no two IT solutions are alike. The User would need to hire a second Expert in order to fully assess a solution’s quality.
SOFIns Benefits to Consumers
SOFIns uses an "Insert Disk and Apply Power" method that:
Initializes the user's computer, even in situations when the computer may not otherwise be bootable
Automates diagnostics and troubleshooting of the computer
Provides a web interface to the computer, from where the User may initiate the delivery of IT services that were previously created by an Expert
The SOFIns approach simplifies hardware, software and network troubleshooting and access to solutions such as data recovery, virus removal and software installation.
