Many office equipment dealers (OEDs) have made the move into managed services. Those that have done so successfully are seeing strong growth and profits, but the investment in training and hiring can sway others from making the move. The hurdles to offering managed services are even higher if a dealer feels it has to build its own infrastructure.
Continuum has built its business around a model that makes the transition for office equipment dealers and IT consultancies to managed services less painful and risky. That point was driven home at its annual Navigate 2016 conference in Boston this week. Continuum provides services and tools that its partners can brand as their own, including a network operations center (NOC), the Continuity247 backup and disaster recovery service, and a help desk. Of its more than 5,800 partners, about 300 come from the office equipment channel.
The theme of the event was about daring to reach for that next level. “Companies often reach a plateau, but never achieve that next plateau,” said Continuum CEO Michael George in his keynote address. He urged those in attendance to challenge conventional thinking. “Do something bold, unique.”
The unspoken message, of course, is that Continuum is a vehicle that will help its partners reach new heights and do bold things. We can’t speak to whether that’s true or not, but Continuum did make a compelling case for taking away some of the pain and risk for dealers considering a managed services offering.
Michael Amiri
Most of the partners at the event were solely managed services providers (MSPs), but several OEDs were honored for their success, including Partner of the Year winner Gordon Flesch Company. In fact, OEDs have some inherent advantages over MSPs to resell services like Continuum’s, according Continuum’s Director of Dealer Services Michael Amiri. “MSPs have the technical acumen, but OEDs have the sales acumen,” he said. OEDs often have dedicated sales teams, which leads to servicing more customers than the average MSP. MSPs often rely on the owner or others who do sales in addition to other tasks, according to Amiri.
Having a strong sales team is important, he added, because the SMB market that Continuum partners serve is vastly underserved when it comes to providing IT services. “You want a relationship holder who can show [the customer] how to alleviate pain points,” said Amiri. “The OED is positioned to do that.”
He said that Continuum recognizes that it’s a big decision for an OED to add managed services to its portfolio. Although Continuum provides much of the labor need for those services, selling and supporting managed services requires a different approach to sales and planning, and that the OED invest in hiring people who can work with customers at a technical level to understand and address their needs. To make the transition to managed services, the top management of a dealer has to be on board completely. “If you don’t have top-down buy-in, it’s not going to happen,” said Amiri. “If it’s not serious to management, it’s not going to be serious to sales.”
Amiri said that demand for managed services is only going to grow. He said that for SMBs, IT is typically the third largest expense after rent and people. The dollars are there, but Amiri said another reason for an OED to consider managed services is that it makes the OED more relevant to its customers. “The server is more relevant to the customer [than a printer],” he said. “It’s not as easy to displace.”
He also cited growing demand for security solutions as more SMBs become aware of how vulnerable they are. One of the announcements at the event was that Continuum will offer additional security services this year that help protect against intrusion. “You have international organizations that are penetrating networks through any device,” said Amiri. The new Continuum security offerings will allow OEDs to set themselves up as trusted advisers for security problems. “It will become just part of the IT services deliverable,” he said.
When asked about where OEDs struggle with offering managed services, Amiri said, “OEDs sometimes lack confidence in believing that they can pull it off.” That confidence is important, because if a sales team senses a lack of it, it’s not going to talk about managed services with existing accounts. “We’re not trying to turn an organization into IT experts overnight,” he said. “We will help organizations learn how to pull off being a trusted IT adviser.”
