A heating and cooling company is a dispatch operation with a warehouse attached. Calls come in, technicians go out, invoices go out behind them, and in January none of it can stop. The software that runs it, dispatch, invoicing, inventory, maintenance agreements, has moved to the cloud for most companies, which means the business now runs on internet connections, phones and tablets rather than a server in the back office. We provide managed IT services and cybersecurity for HVAC, plumbing and mechanical companies across the Twin Cities, priced per device at a flat monthly rate with no long-term contract.
Every business loses money when its systems go down. An HVAC company loses a day of dispatch, a technician who cannot pull up the equipment history at the customer’s house, and invoices that never get sent. Every business has data worth protecting. A service company holds customer addresses, card details on file, technician records and the maintenance agreements that are the most valuable thing it owns.
The work is also always moving: a dispatcher in the office, twenty technicians on tablets, a parts counter, a call-answering service after hours, and a phone system that has to ring when the furnace fails at 6 a.m. Support built for a quiet office does not fit a company whose busiest hours are a cold snap.
Help desk that knows your company. One dedicated technician who learns your dispatch, invoicing and accounting software, your phone setup and your people, backed by a team so nobody waits when that person is busy. Remote support resolves most issues in minutes, including on a tablet in a customer’s basement.
Technicians connected. Tablets and phones set up so the dispatch app, equipment history, photos and card payments work at every stop, and can be wiped remotely if one goes missing.
Phones that ring in the truck. A hosted phone system with call queues for the office, an app on every technician’s phone and after-hours routing to your on-call person or answering service. See our business phone systems.
Microsoft 365 for the office. Email, shared calendars and files with multi-factor authentication and ongoing Microsoft 365 support.
Backups and continuity. Anything still on a server in the office backed up off site and verified, Microsoft 365 backed up daily, and a plan for dispatching from anywhere if the office loses power or internet. See our cloud backup services.
Service companies are targeted because they take card payments, pay a lot of suppliers and run on cloud logins. Business email compromise, where a criminal poses as a supplier and changes the bank details on an invoice, and account takeover of the dispatch or email login are the attacks we see most, followed by ransomware timed for the season. Our managed cybersecurity services layer the defences: Huntress managed detection and response on every computer and server, SentinelOne antivirus beside it, Microsoft 365 accounts watched for suspicious sign-ins and forwarding rules, email filtering in front of every mailbox, and security awareness training for the office staff who handle payments.
Two free checks show where a company stands today: the cyber insurance readiness check and the email spoofing check.
Taking card payments in the field brings PCI obligations, and the customer records in a dispatch system are personal data under Minnesota law. We keep card handling inside the payment provider’s app so card numbers never touch your systems, lock down who can export the customer list, and help answer the questions a cyber-insurance renewal asks. Companies that need a named security lead for a larger contract can add our vCISO service.
A cold snap fills the phones and the schedule at the same time. Before the season we check the internet connections, the phone routing, the tablets and the backups, and we freeze non-urgent changes during the weeks that matter. Our business continuity planning covers the office losing power or internet: dispatch continues from phones and laptops, calls route to mobiles, and nobody waits for the lights to come back.
We price by device, not by employee, so a company with twenty-five technicians and six office computers pays for the computers, servers and firewalls it actually has, at a flat monthly rate with no long-term contract. See a ballpark in about a minute on our managed services pricing calculator; every rate is published on our pricing page.
We support heating and cooling, plumbing, refrigeration and mechanical contractors across Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding suburbs, from a family shop to a company with dozens of trucks, with remote support for technicians wherever they are. OAC Technology has supported Twin Cities businesses since 2000 and is audited every year under SOC 2.
Yes, along with Successware, Sage, QuickBooks and the payment and GPS apps that connect to them. If you run something we have not named, ask; the answer is usually yes.
Yes. A hosted phone system puts the office number on every technician’s phone, adds call queues for the dispatchers and routes after-hours calls to your on-call person. Our phone system quote tool gives a monthly estimate.
It is managed, so we wipe it remotely the moment you tell us, and nothing on it was stored only on the device. A replacement is set up and back on the dispatch board the same day.
We keep card handling inside your payment provider’s app so card numbers never touch your computers, which keeps the PCI questionnaire short, and we help answer it.
Most of our HVAC clients do not. The help desk, the tablets, the phones, Microsoft 365, backups and security are the work now, and it is priced per device just the same.
If you are evaluating IT support for your company, or your current provider has never heard of your dispatch software, call 952-548-5558 or contact us for a free consultation. We will review your current setup, tell you plainly what we would change, and give you a flat monthly price.
