Central Solutions, Inc. in Mason strives to be, in the words of its president Brian Tort, “the one-stop IT shop,” and since opening its doors in 2005 has succeeded by offering a multitude of levels of service, “from your basic PC network server support to project management.”

Today, they specialize in wireless technology, from traditional tech support to “‘hey, I want to put in a point-to-point circuit which will get rid of my lease-line cost,’” to IP security cameras and more. Tort has spent “15+ years in technology. For 10 years, I worked for a school district. [I] started as a technician and worked my way up to being the director of technology,” Tort says. With a mindset to work well with customers to provide the best quality services, he decided to open his own business. Central Solutions began as a virtual company with offices all over the state, but, having been born and raised in Mason, in 2008 Tort decided there was no better place to become a brick and mortar company.

Central Solutions’ staff fluctuates between eight and 12 people. As a relatively small company, he said that their tech staff have to be salespeople as well, who “continue to work with customers after the sale,” while the sales staff do nothing but bring in new business. Their client base is diverse, and includes municipalities, and three school districts which use Central Solutions to manage their technology. Residential and walk-in customers are welcome at their store in Mason, where one technician is always on hand (during business hours) to help.

Tort, who is on the board of directors of the Mason Area Chamber of Commerce, chairs the city’s Entrepreneurial Club and serves on Mason’s Economic Development Committee, says that the company has  moved to a new, larger facility on Kipp Road. He attributes their growth to a sales philosophy that has at its core understanding the customers’ needs instead of trying to push the hardware or software flavor-of-the-day on them. He considers his company and people “integrators of technology,” whether that technology is phone systems, security cameras, or wireless point-to-point networks.

The best reason for people to call Central Solutions? As a one-stop IT shop, Tort says they work with customers to provide the partners and solutions they need, along with quality and complete service. “We make sure we listen to our customers to understand their needs, and make sure we provide the right solution the first time.”

ASK

In 1993, three men, longtime IBM employees, formed ASK in Lansing. For the first 10 years of its existence, the company’s principal business was servicing customers’ mainframe computers. Over time, as technology made computers faster and less expensive, the men realized that they would need a new business model if they were to survive.

Enter then-IBM regional manager Mike Maddox, who had gotten to know and respect ASK and its people. He was offered, and accepted, an opportunity to come aboard, and in 2004 led the transition of the company into one that manages IT services, or as Maddox puts it, “We handle proactive [IT] care and feeding for our clients.” ASK’s typical client is a business with between 10 and 150 employees—large enough to need IT support, but small enough not to have the financial wherewithal to have their own IT staff.

Though its primary focus is mid-Michigan, today ASK serves clients across the state and around the country. “A lot of customers come to us through referrals,” he says, “because we have an extremely strong technical staff.” He goes on to say that the customers have “issues that other IT companies can’t fix.”

With 11 of its 14 employees working in IT, very little turnover, and a service practice that emphasizes a team approach, clients come to (rightly) feel that almost everyone at ASK is working for them. This approach, along with “regular ticket review meetings to do case studies” assures that everybody gets the benefits.

He points to a couple of things that he believes give ASK a competitive edge. “The first thing, culturally, [is that] we’ve retained the mentality that the customer’s best interest will guide everything we do. Customers don’t want to have a detailed explanation of technology,” he says. "They want to hear it in plain English.”

“The other thing,” he continues, “is the broad range of experience. [We] handle so many different client environments [that there aren’t] too many things we haven’t seen before.” He also says that one of ASK’s mottos is that “you don’t fix IT problems by throwing hardware at them. That [only] makes your problems run faster.”

The old break-fix model, as Maddox called it, doesn’t work. Instead, ASK charges a flat monthly fee that allows it to “provide all of the proactive solutions needed to keep companies running properly,” and gives clients a predictable fee. It also means that “the more problems they have, the less money we make,” he says, giving ASK an incentive to keep clients’ IT departments running like a top.