Today’s business technology works best when it plays nicely with others. And when it’s good, it’s very, very good. But when it is bad? Well, it can be horrid.
When that “smart” printer fails to do its job, production grinds to a halt, and a business owner must first figure out who to call. Their print manager? Their IT provider? Here’s a worst-case scenario that happens far too often: both providers blame the other for causing the problem.
No business owner wants that, which is a big reason more print dealers are considering adding managed IT services. They can be the one-stop shop that eliminates the blame game and reduces a great deal of stress and frustration for their clients.
We added managed IT services in 2008 for those reasons, and while it wasn’t without its challenges, the added service has definitely paid off. But that’s because we followed a few basic life lessons along the way.
Follow the Golden Rule
If you’re thinking of adding any complex managed service, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. You don’t like it when your strategic business partners overpromise and underdeliver, and neither do your clients. Don’t make promises you can’t keep just to win more business.
Be realistic about your response times and what solutions you can support well. You may need to initially outsource IT tasks to a third party, but be very, very careful when you choose your vendor—if they don’t serve your clients as well as you do, your reputation will suffer.
Don’t Bite Off More than You Can Chew
If you’d rather scale up internally and avoid outsourcing, one way to keep things manageable—at least at first—is to stay focused on a single industry or businesses of a certain size. It’s also a decent way of standing out in a crowded market. However you choose to start, start small. And as you grow, my advice would be to stay picky.
This might surprise some print dealers, but even though Marco is now a large national provider, we’re still somewhat choosy when it comes to our managed IT clients. We want to be a strategic partner to any company that sees value in minimizing its risk. Unfortunately, clients who refuse basic cybersecurity hygiene are actually a risk to our business as well as their own.
It’s pretty typical that a business that has experienced a cybersecurity incident will be named right alongside their IT provider in an any articles written about the incident, without any other disclaimer. You know, like the part of the story when their provider had been recommending a server upgrade for years, and it was ignored right up until the business detected a significant security incident.
We definitely want our name to appear in the paper when we achieve new certifications, when we add a new strategic partner and when our staff volunteers for events around our communities. But our ultimate goal is to keep our clients’ data secure, their systems running, and both of our reputations intact.
Use the Buddy System
No matter how you scale up your business, you should give serious thought to beefing up your infrastructure sooner rather than later. You’ll probably need to automate some of your core processes and business functions so your staff can spend their time more strategically and so you can offer your clients the same responsiveness and attention, even as you grow.
Fortunately, there’s a business out there that can make this part easy, and I’m more than happy to recommend them. We’ve been using ConnectWise for quite some time to help us provide personalized services to our clients at scale. They can help you manage devices and client contracts, automate invoicing and collections, monitor and resolve your clients’ IT issues remotely, take the heavy lifting out of quotes and proposals, and make it easier for your clients to access self-service tools and connect with your business online.
ConnectWise has devoted serious time and energy to developing world-class MSP software that makes getting into this business much easier—there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. And if you’re wondering, yes, they’re also an IBPI vendor partner, so you can access these solutions plus all the rebates and insider discounts that come with them.
Always Tell the Truth
If you’re wondering why I’m telling you this, here’s a harsh truth. Managed IT services have completely transformed over the past 10 years and enterprise-scale companies have gotten to know our industry well. However, some small-to-midsize businesses are still under the impression that managed IT services are generally full of poor communicators who only show up to fix what’s broken and profit from their frustrations.
Sadly, as most of us in technology know all too well, SMBs are being pummeled right now by cybercriminals. Their biggest ally should, by all rights, be a highly skilled managed IT service provider that keeps them safe while keeping disruptions at bay. But that’s not our industry’s reputation, at least in their eyes.
I believe in the power of small businesses to shape our communities, to bring new opportunities and to give big businesses a run for their money. At Marco, we try to help our small to midsize clients do just that. But it makes me sad to hear that yet another business that’s been around for 20 years has been forced to close after a cyber incident.
American businesses are hurting, and they’re going to need all IT hands on deck to turn the tide on international cybercrime. As an IT provider, I believe that when we all do better for our clients, we’ll all do better for our entire industry.
