I keep hearing, reading, and writing about Managed Services and the crazy great opportunity it presents for the traditional office technology dealer. You’re probably hearing and reading about the same thing.
Are you buying it?
I understand the need to tread carefully into this arena. I’m also aware that there are various ways to enter the business, some more suitable than others depending on the dealership and a slew of other factors.
I interviewed someone from the industry recently and he shared a few things off the record that are worth repeating even if I can’t give this person the proper attribution. “The industry has gotten so preoccupied with IT being the savior; it has shades of the early days of MPS. That scares me because I think IT is an opportunity, but people who failed at MPS are probably not the best people to do this.”
Ouch!
Could he be talking about you? If so, those words should give you something to think about although on a cheerier note, we can all learn from our past mistakes.
The other comment he shared with me was that MPS has all the same principles that a reseller needs to build upon and that the dealer community has the skill set and tools to do it, but they are still more comfortable with a transaction-based business model.
“If you’re running your business that way it’s hard to be account focused,” he emphasized. IT will probably force them into doing that. If it does and it helps them expand their [MPS business] that’s golden.”
He fully believes that dealers looking to transition into Managed Services, that aren’t fully investing themselves and trying to learn it as they go probably won’t be successful.
“They’ll get frustrated and turn away from it much like they did with MPS,” he opined. “Now, MPS is defensive as opposed to proactive. And they should be focused on MPS, but in lieu of not getting into MPS at least get into IT the correct way.”
What’s the correct way?
One prevailing school of thought is that partnering with an organization such as GreatAmerica’s Collabrance or Continuum is the best option as opposed to growing a Managed Services practice organically or acquiring a Managed Services company.
Before we agree to disagree on that school of thought, I can tell you that later this month we’ll be presenting more information about the former option so you can decide for yourself whether or not it’s the correct way for you. It’s likely too that we’ll be writing about those other two options as well because Managed Services like rock and roll is here to stay.
Thanks for reading.
