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Business View Magazine
direction. We always stayed focused where we wanted
the core of our business: to surround the re-occurring
revenue that break/fix and managed service gener-
ated.”
Thus, getting businesses to sign support contracts
was Lincoln’s modus operandi. The monthly contract
price would include preventive maintenance (PM)
and provisions for parts and labor for anything that
needed to be repaired. “Back in the day, it was more
of environmental PMs than anything else,” says Cillis,
“meaning making sure filters and things of that nature
were vacuumed out and cleaned up. As time elapsed,
preventive maintenance took on a bigger role. So, we
went from the maintenance agreements to the man-
aged service agreements, which now involve other ser-
vices as part of that support contract.”
According to Cillis, a typical Lincoln client will be a busi-
ness that has about a hundred and fifty users. “I have
a customers that range from five users, and my largest
managed service customer has 1,500 users, but the
bulk of them are in that hundred user range where
we’re providing them with the help desk for all the us-
ers, all the administration support for all the servers,
managing their backups, and providing them with on-
site services when needed, depending upon how the
contract is written.”
Cillis says that over time, Lincoln has had to adapt
in many ways. “Seven years ago, I didn’t have a help
desk,” he remembers. “When customers wanted
