Managed Services "Are You in or Out"!

We just partnered with an IT services company as another addition to our portfolio. Managing the network is very critical moving forward. We are just in the infancy stage but can see the opportunity and growth opportunities.

I believe this is the future of our industry. Forget MPS, that's a failure. In the near future a single vendor will manage all of an office's computer hardware. From switches, routers, PCs, printers and MFPs. Its already heading that way. At the very least we all need to partner up with the best IT companies in our territories and work together and share leads. Remember the IT guy's opinion will almost always carry a ton of weight when the customer is choosing an MFP or vendor to connect hardware to the network.

"pretty group of contributors?" I don't know if I'm part of the "pretty group" but I'll go ahead and respond. We have had good results selling IT services to small to medium companies that "dedicated" IT companies don't want to mess with. I'm talking about something in the neighborhood of 3-15 stations. Unfortunately, we now have a problem...customer IT issues are often urgent where getting our MFP's connected seldom is so us copier reps have become less of a priority. We might have to wait a week sometimes to get IT install support from our own people. They see our request as being non-revenue generating even though our dept pays their dept for every install but that is just a revenue shuffle and not net new incremental revenue. However, I'm a firm believer that "A rising tide lifts all boats" Any profitable revenue coming into this company helps us all.

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pretty group of contributors?" I don't know if I'm part of the "pretty group"

Jim: You are one of those!! Keep up the awesome threads!

We embraced FM Audit MPS early on and were trained and certified by Kyocera. (Art I was actually in Jersey). Our company started as a PC networking firm so there was that comfort level.

The first 2 years went fine. We signed up 17 contracts. 7 units to 56. As a sales person this was a great program to add to my equipment sales.

Then we realized the monthly fees were too expensive for our volume/profit. Also some customers did not like the auto toner delivery notification. They wanted 2 toners on the shelf not empty waiting for the next notification. If you have to float all this toner there goes the benefit of MPS and your profit.

Today we have turned off FM Audit and are looking for a lower cost program. The USB discovery device is one of the coolist gizmo we have to WOW the customer. But it comes at a price. We use Kyocera KM Net viewer to capture usage.But the cusotmer needs to run it and send us the report. Most of the IT guys do not mind after I explained the new fees we will charge inorder to keeping FM Audit running.

Don

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Originally posted by Art Post:
I'm interested to know if your company is considering taking on Managed Services or thinking about it or maybe not a chance.

Yes.

I agree with 'fisher' that "this is the future of our industry" and Managed IT Services would be a logical step for Independent Dealers to take as soon as possible. In fact, it could be necessary in the future, to help protect your base and gain net new business, with this offering.

In respect to IT resources and managed services for those of us that are prospecting for it. I'm find ing it a lot harder to get appointments, meaning I can find someone who is unhappy with a copier, lease or the service provider, but when it comes to IT, I'm not finding a lot of pain. Is everyone else experiencing this too?

The route where we are finding a lot of interest is speaking to our ability to provide complementary services (remote monitoring, endpoint security, data recovery, etc.) to their current I.T. offerings, whether internal or outsourced. Our goal isn't to replace their existing I.T. (unless they're looking for that) but rather to help them do more with less. A lot of companies that had multiple I.T. people a few years ago are now rolling with a single individual who is overwhelmed. Adding MNS to that equation for $2k-$4k per month is substantially less than adding another full-time person, and you get much more than you would get just by adding another body.

We have been tossing around the idea of offering IT services for the last 2 years. We do believe there is enough of a market there based on our customer's inquiries.

Old Glory brings up a good point that we were anticipating as well. You almost need to have 2 groups. First, your install/analysts, and second your dedicated IT services personnel. While ideal, it may not be monetarily feasible for smaller dealers to carry the extra bodies.

The secret is for them to produce enough revenue so that they are not "extra."

You got it.

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Originally posted by Printfun:
We have been tossing around the idea of offering IT services for the last 2 years. We do believe there is enough of a market there based on our customer's inquiries.

Old Glory brings up a good point that we were anticipating as well. You almost need to have 2 groups. First, your install/analysts, and second your dedicated IT services personnel. While ideal, it may not be monetarily feasible for smaller dealers to carry the extra bodies.

We have the two groups, and of course we have to put in the dreaded work tickets for help.

We've started our campaign with our existing accounts and to tell you the truth I'm having a tough go of it, maybe I've got too much imaging at heart and feel like more calls dedicated for MSP may take away from my bread and butter.

We've been doing sharepoint, PC's, Servers for sometime now and I've sold some of these, however the time that it takes too close is awefully long. Is anyone else experienceing the same or is it just me?

Art

If you're going to sell I.T. you have to know I.T. and be able to speak their language. I take our I.T. Sales Specialists on a lot of calls, and once they start speaking geek, I know enough to somewhat understand, but the conversation eventually gets to areas that are completely Greek to me. It's just like if we were to get some sales guys from IBM and tried to train them to understand and sell imaging. It would be completely foreign to them.

txeagle, I hear you and we do the same with appointments, we take the iT guy or gal along with us. Where I'm having the problem is just getting the appointments. Guess I gotta learn how to geek speek!