Todd Croteau, president of
All Covered
Todd Croteau does not claim to have all the answers. But the president of All Covered, the IT services division of Konica Minolta, is heartened by the knowledge that with more than 800 engineers in 35 locations across the United States, the answer to any IT-related issue—no matter how complicated, esoteric or vexing—is within reach.
All Covered offers the complete spectrum of managed IT, application, cloud and security services, mobile solutions, consulting and project management. The platform provider utilizes a vertical approach to solving the needs of its customers, producing tailored solutions for the educational, finance, legal and health care markets. The acquisitions All Covered has made over the years has enabled it to amass what Croteau likes to call the “economies of skill,” an endless reservoir of business-specific competencies to go with its base of technological proficiency.
The provider serves the end user environment through three outlets: the dealer channel, the Konica Minolta direct channel and via its own sales network. All Covered works with dealers that possess varying levels of IT proficiency or experience.
We sat down with Croteau to discuss how All Covered continues to live up to its name’s credo, particularly in light of its 2017 acquisition of voice IP provider TLS.NET and a soon-to-be announced security specialist that will further enhance its comprehensive approach to full-service managed IT solutions.
Tell us about your career path leading up to your current position at All Covered.
Croteau: During college, I had a job with IBM selling computers to students and faculty. When I graduated, I was applying for an engineering position in Boston and I had the IBM work on my resume. They hired me at a time when networks were just starting to be put in place. So for the first couple of months at this old-school company, I got my hands dirty setting up the network and putting AutoCAD and new technologies in place. That provided exposure to some other companies. I met my future partner and we started an IT company in Boston focused on engineering firms. We grew that quickly, and in 2000, we were approached by what was then called All Bases Covered and decided to join forces. They already had sales and engineering managers, so I took a customer care position. My career has taken some twists and turns and I’ve experienced most positions within the company, including regional oversight, COO and CEO. All Covered was bought by Konica Minolta toward the end of 2010.
I’ve never been bored; the combination of the technology and the growth we’ve experienced has kept it fresh for me. It’s probably been more entrepreneurial with Konica Minolta in terms of the desire for growth and expansion in services, along with the opportunity to have solutions for the direct and dealer channels, as well as our own customer acquisition activity.
Can you tell us about the evolution of All Covered since it was acquired by Konica Minolta nearly eight years ago?
Croteau: My experience with Konica Minolta definitely exceeded expectations. Anytime you’re a CEO of a company, there’s a professional transition you want to ensure for the benefit of the customers. That’s foremost on my mind. We’ve gone from a 300-person company when we were acquired to 1,000. The sophistication of our offerings and the breadth and types of customers that we service in terms of their size and their industries have expanded. All those have created fun opportunities for employees to grow and the organization to evolve.
What elements does a Konica Minolta bring to the table in adding heft and stability to the overall managed IT platform?
Croteau: Being in Silicon Valley, home to the original dotcom boom, the focus is always on the next quarter or two, the near term. One of the biggest differences with Konica Minolta—because of the Japanese business mindset—is having a long-term plan that allows you to view the road farther out and make decisions that are based on the longer horizon. I think that’s played out well for us in different areas, whether in verticals, new offerings, security or voice, where we can think about 10 years from now. There’s a commitment to acquisitions and we have a large number of sales resources in the field. The dealer channel has trust in Konica Minolta. There’s a strong dealer community and a large customer base as well. It’s been a great platform for us to be able to grow with that long-term view and not a myopic focus on what’s going to happen during the next 90 days. When sitting in front of a customer or prospect, the Konica Minolta brand has a strong awareness and it’s a positive brand. The fact that the scale is there brings extra credibility to our endeavors.
How would you characterize the strengths of All Covered’s overall value proposition?
Croteau: The managed service provider industry is many times more fragmented than the BTA channel is; there’s thousands of managed service providers out there. I’ve always maintained that size has to bring some value to the customer. Otherwise, it doesn’t make sense. Scale benefits our value proposition because we are an aggregation of knowledge. I like to refer to it as the Economies of Skill. We can have someone anywhere in the United States who has particular knowledge of a given software or vertical, and we can leverage that for an employee or customer involvement. We’re not limited by the knowledge of a handful of people, and more knowledge leads to more specialization. The customer gets the best of both worlds, because we have the local presence, local company and local relationships supported by the full breadth of All Covered and Konica Minolta. This creates a unique value proposition, because a lot of smaller providers just don’t have that knowledge and specialization firepower.
Alex Hawkins, IT service consultant for All Covered (holding trophy), receives a top sales award during a Konica Minolta banquet. Also shown, from left, are Mark Bradford, senior vice president of business transformation and planning for Konica Minolta; Todd Croteau, president of All Covered; Rick Taylor, president and CEO of Konica Minolta; and Sam Errigo, executive vice president of sales and business development at Konica Minolta
As managed IT continues to be a growth segment in the dealer channel, how does All Covered differentiate itself from other platform providers?
Croteau: For us, it’s really about collaborating with the dealer on the benefits of the Konica Minolta dealer program and all our unique offerings, including application development, voice IP, and a robust and agile cloud offering. We have domain expertise in all the different verticals; we can support large enterprise and multi-location customers, and we have professional services that we can deliver for high-end technologies. Not a lot of providers can offer this comprehensive set of services. For me, it’s about making sure that dealers are aware of the additional offerings and skill sets that can bring more value to dealers and their customers.
Last summer, Konica Minolta added TLS.NET as a complement to All Covered. How has the integration process fared thus far, and how has the voice/cloud component been received by clients?
Croteau: For a long time, I’ve had people come to me asking to do voice. I’d avoided it for a long time because I didn’t want to have to pick a particular vendor and have to mobilize and train sales people and delivery people across different offices. It was an area I thought was going to go to the cloud, and that’s what happened. This deal was just a huge opportunity for us and the timing was right. TLS has a passion for voice, and in working with them they’ve come as advertised. They’re adding customers at the highest clip in this area right now. It’s really building momentum.
What role will acquisition play in further expanding All Covered’s competencies?
Croteau: A lot of our initial acquisitions were geography-focused. But in the last couple of years, we’ve shifted our strategy to making competency-based or solutions-based acquisitions such as TLS. We just completed a security acquisition for our marketing enterprise customers that I think it will grow as fast as TLS. The security addition will enable us to add employees with expertise for the midmarket enterprise customers we support. Ultimately, we can take that knowledge and weave it into employee readiness and security.
Sometimes, I say no to certain expansions when the industry’s not ready for it yet. I look for a match between the passions and the career aspirations of an owner as well as their technology to go with customers of certain demographics. We map it out to see if there’s a fit.
Tell us about All Covered’s vertical approach to its IT platform, offering tailored solutions for the education, health care, financial and legal markets.
Croteau: All of these verticals are the seedlings we’ve obtained through acquisition, gaining knowledge and industry expertise in each of these markets. What we’ve found is a larger share of customers—more than 50 percent—come from these verticals. Not only that, the average size of the customer contract is much larger in these verticals. That speaks to the packages and solutions we’re putting together, and provides an even stronger value proposition when you’re talking to a specific vertical. All four have been equally successful. Education is different from financial, legal is different from health care. They all have unique components, applications, regulations and requirements. The data we have show that the more you focus on a vertical approach, the stronger the return to the provider.
Network security is one of the greatest concerns businesses face today. Can you provide some insight into All Covered’s layered strategy for security services? How does All Covered stay ahead of the latest threats?
Croteau: Security is really part and parcel to providing IT services. Training is one of the areas that needs the most amount of security focus for organizations. The key is teaching your employees to be more aware and much less naïve in terms of how bad actors will try to manipulate them in their work or non-work environments. Employees are barraged with these links in emails and websites, and there’s a general lack of awareness of how much nefarious stuff is out there. It takes some basic handwashing techniques that you can teach people to help reduce much of the risk. One way we help customers with this is by sending employees trick emails and see who will take the bait. When the employee clicks on that email, they’re directed to a website that says ‘ha-ha, we got you’ and then we show organizations the things that could have happened. At the same time, the customers can send a note to their managers about coaching employees and having conversations with repeat offenders. It’s about teaching people how to not fall into a trap. This is why we made the security acquisition, to have more specialized people focused solely on security.
Members of All Covered and Konica Minolta join in on the celebration following the 2016 Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach in California
What changes in the BTA space are influencing your go-to-market strategy, and what variables will play a role in your strategy going forward?
Croteau: I see a lot of large and small dealers following Konica Minolta’s lead, expanding their offerings to customers and venturing into the managed IT space. I think we’re seeing a convergence of the print world with the IT world. From our perspective, particularly for the Konica Minolta dealer community, my motivation is success for the dealers. It’s an area that calls for a one-on-one discussion. For many traditional BTA organizations that primarily sell MFP machines, IT can seem overwhelming to them. We talk to them, tell them the steps they can take and show how we can help them. For the dealers that are more sophisticated and experienced in the IT world, we can complement each other. We have the resources, expertise and depth that can be of value to them in certain situations.
Are there situations where All Covered competes with dealer community directly?
Croteau: When dealers enroll in our program, we have a safe harbor status with them. If they don’t enroll, then there’s a competitive scenario. In my entire time with All Covered, it has never been an issue. There was only one occasion when we received a strong referral that just so happened to be a dealer’s customer. Eventually, we conceded the opportunity to the dealer. We feel the dealer is more important to us than any single opportunity.
Can non-Konica Minolta dealers approach All Covered directly as well?
Croteau: It hasn’t occurred until recently, when some non-Konica Minolta dealers reached out to us because of their interest in the voice offering. Obviously, it speaks to the tremendous opportunity presented by this aspect of managed IT. Dealers have their own program, but we have other niches that can also participate in the voice program.
What are your goals for 2018?
Croteau: Everything revolves around the continued growth, maturity and refinement of our IT strategy. Two areas of importance are worth noting. We are putting a new back-end system in place that will bring us together with Konica Minolta. We’ve been operating on our own system, which means when a customer gets an invoice from All Covered, it actually comes from Konica Minolta separately. Now we’re bringing both together and it will allows us to be seamless in quoting for the proposal stage to the customer. Now they’ll get a single bill for everything from All Covered and Konica Minolta. Another thing we’ve been heavily involved in is the Workplace Hub, the next-generation product Konica Minolta is working on which combines print and scan, IT and the Internet of Things. There’s many different versions of it, whether it’s a pure IT, print or a collaboration item. There’s a lot of effort going into the launching of that product and we’re excited about the future.
