We’re IT People. But We’re Also People People. If We May Brag, That Kind of Makes Us Unicorns.
Our Secret? Our CEO Isn’t an IT Person. He’s a Business Person (Just Like You).
That’s why we first start with your business needs and goals — and let the IT follow. Sometimes that means finding creative ways to help you increase your profit margin by cutting unnecessary IT expenses. Other times it means upgrading your entire IT infrastructure in phases to help you reach that big, audacious 3-year strategic vision you have.
The first step is understanding what matters to you, what drives your bottom line, and from there we can pinpoint where IT may be slowing you down and how it can help you speed up. And we do it all in a friendly, personable way, without using ridiculous tech-speak that no one understands.
(Zac didn’t want his image on this page, but the marketing team made him do it anyway <insert evil laugh here>.)
How We Work
Borg red alert! We become part of your company.
We’re not one of those IT companies that gets you to sign then ghosts on your texts. We get in deep with our clients — like, a virtual chief information officer who hangs out in your Slack or Teams chat room and posts kitten pictures in your #cute channel deep.
By becoming a true part of your organization, we learn what really matters to you. We see what people complain about, how they celebrate, and what’s important. And when it comes to making good choices that make sense for your business, that’s a lot more effective than an hourlong meeting every quarter.
Here’s an example: If your database is starting to throw tantrums, our answer isn’t automatically, “Your server is 5 years old, time for a new one.” Because we know you and your needs, we say instead, “We know how you’re using your server, and we think you should throw it away and switch to this other system that would be perfect for your needs.”
Our Team
We care about our employees (and the clients who love us care about theirs too). We’ll be honest: IT Assurance doesn’t offer budget IT or budget IT people. We take a lot of time to find not just IT experts, but friendly folks who can make your staff feel heard and cared about. It’s not enough to just fix the computer problem if we ruffle everybody’s feathers along the way.
Here Are Some Other Reasons We Are Awesome:
- We’re Portland’s only majority-minority IT company. We don’t just value diversity and inclusion, we aggressively recruit and hire people from diverse backgrounds.
- We screen our vendors annually using a diversity, equity, and inclusion interview, and we work with our vendors regularly to improve their policies and accomplishments in these areas.
- We prefer to attract many people and repulse some others than to be vaguely acceptable to everybody.
Our Mantras
These two mantras are so important, we require new employees to have them tattooed. (Okay, we don’t. HR had issues. It became a Thing.)
“We take the time to focus, plan, and execute.”
That is, we value all the steps necessary to get you the outcome you want, at the price we promise, on the timeline we agree on. You can read more about our 5-step IT project planning methodology here.
“We hate heroes.”
With no offense to the late, great Stan Lee. But here’s the thing — a hero requires a crisis. If we have to play “hero” IT company, it often means we failed to avoid the crisis that required that heroism. Are we playing “hero” because our documentation was lacking, or because we didn’t keep track of a warranty? That’s a failure, not a success, even if we throw enough technician time on it to solve the problem quickly.