Digital agency WebOracle starts SME tech support service

Melbourne digital agency WebOracle has launched a new support service for SMEs that it claims is a category-killer.

WebOracle has offered support to larger companies for years, focused on digital marketing and domain name registration.

The company’s new services for SMEs are billed as "an IT solutions package designed specifically as a one-stop-shop".The package offers email backup and “outage support”, application of Google compliance updates required to ensure clients’ sites meet the search giant’s requirements, monitoring of network issues like web site and email blacklisting (plus reversal of such bans).

The company also offers remote hardware support to ensure client PCs can access its email and other services.

The new service offering is 24/7, with Melbourne-based agents handling calls and inquiries made through other channels.

And it costs $120 a month, for at least 12 months of service.

But it won’t much frighten the rest of the channel, because while WebOracle claims it is “ONE SERVICE PROVIDER for ALL of your IT requirements” (their CAPS), the service doesn’t include plenty of useful stuff: there’s no wider security service, printing comes up blank, as does networking, hardware break-fix, application expertise and plenty of other channel staples.

The company nonetheless launched the offering with research that found “one in five Australian small businesses waste nearly five weeks a year due to IT issues.”

WebOracle’s one-throat-to-choke model for the issues it covers might help to reduce that number. But for a great many SMEs with common problems that go beyond WebOracle’s offerings, the agency will struggle to deliver on its promise to remove the need for multiple support engagements for “IT problems”.