The Perfect Recipe for an IT Solutions Provider in Today's Market

Over the last three years organizations have faced unprecedented Information Technology challenges.  Many have experienced a fire drill in moving their employees into a successful and secure distributed workforce.  More purchases of hardware/software have occurred than ever before and companies are now faced with managing those assets in new work environments without additional staff.  These various challenges have put organizations on pause from large refreshes as they let the dust settle and regroup. 

How does an IT Solutions Provider stand out in this climate?

We have discovered that having both the ability to be small enough to provide agile support, yet big enough to deliver any solution has struck a nerve.  Our team also engages customers with high frequency, sharing timely insight into the changing IT landscape and how each organization might respond to it.  We have wrestled daily with the question of “how to bring value to customers?” and have realized tremendous growth by being able to successfully answer that question.  Some of our key strategies are:

Executed Core Values

Have you ever had a system integrator call on you and begin the conversation by rolling out their Core Values?  Sounds pretty “old school”, right?  That’s us!  We not only begin new relationships by sharing our Core Values; we ask our customers to hold us accountable for living up to those values whenever we miss the mark.  You can read our statement of Core Values here.  These serve as our “rudder” to propel us forward in a way that results in a win for the customer, a win for the solution, and a win for our company.

One Throat to Choke

We frequently hear from our prospects and customers that a competitor has failed to have their team all “singing from the same song sheet.”  Sales shares one vision.  A sales engineer whiteboards their favorite solution.  This is followed by multiple technical resources being involved in the integration of a solution without the benefit of a project manager who owns the entire process.  This culminates in another employee executing knowledge transfer to the customer’s team with comments like “I’m not sure why they designed it this way.” 

One Florida County customer framed our approach this way:

You have an advantage compared with companies who:

1. Provide a different resource for every project – with no customer relationship or local knowledge

2. Are sometimes less experienced than we had hoped from the sale pitch

3. Require a lot of overhead for scheduling, project management, statements of work, and contracts

With our “One Throat to Choke” strategy we allocate one resource to be responsible for a project, to ensure that the outcome looks and performs the same as the original vision.

CIO Leadership Forums

We have successfully delivered these unique forums for over seven years and our customers find them very valuable.  Our forum process started with one event and four CIO’s, and has grown into over 25 events quarterly across the United States.  This dynamic level of growth is rooted in the unique offerings the forums provide for CIOs: 

● They are local (we attempt to place them within 30 minutes of our participants);

● The agenda is driven by the members and facilitated by our team;

● There is no buying or selling activity at these events - no commercials customers or prospects must endure;

● Events start and end on time with an expected time commitment of 4 hours once per quarter, including lunch.

Here’s a testimonial from one of our CIO Forum attendees:

"The CIO forum is one of the only local groups where I can engage other senior leaders and talk about the challenges we all face. We can discuss products and our experiences with them and have a frank interchange of ideas and perspectives and there’s never any sales pressure."  Barry, CISSP Chief Information Security Officer

Have Fun!

IT Leaders need a break and they need events that allow them to incorporate family and friends.  We host semi-annual fellowship events for the sole purpose of having fun.  These events can range from dinners, to concerts, sporting events, and more.  Every event offers tickets for their spouse or guests and there are no long-winded presentations throughout the evening…we just have fun. 

Education and Best Practices

With so many areas of responsibilities, it’s hard for CIOs to be experts at everything.  As an IT Solutions Provider, we bring tremendous value by offering regular educational opportunities.  We have found success by listening to clients to determine what topics are the most valuable to them.  Once those topics are identified, we plan sessions like a “lunch and learn” or a “tune up.” We bring in all the experts for that subject matter to ensure the CIOs get the most out of that time.  We also publish an educational article weekly through our company blog that targets over 10,000 readers. 

Cybersecurity AND Campus Security

You can no longer be a prudent IT Solutions Provider and not incorporate cybersecurity.  Several years back we made a conscious investment into making cybersecurity an integral component of everything we offer to customers.  That investment has paid off as we have seen over 250% in growth due to our ability to wrap cyber into all of our offerings or offer independent cybersecurity support.  With a 35-year Cybersecurity veteran as our VP of Cybersecurity Solutions, we always stand at the cutting edge to protect our customer’s IT assets.  While the bad guys invent new ways to disrupt your enterprise, we roll out new solutions to help keep them at bay.

 ​IT Solutions Providers offer a robust Crisis Alert system that goes well beyond the weaknesses inherent in application-based solutions that many times fail in the heat of the battle. 

While it’s sad that campus security is frequently in the headlines, we are proud to be one of the first IT Solutions Providers to incorporate this area as one of our primary offerings.  We offer a robust Crisis Alert system that goes well beyond the weaknesses inherent in application-based solutions that many times fail in the heat of the battle.  We are proud to have delivered this solution to many schools, and we are now looking at this offering for healthcare organizations, as well as state and local government facilities. 

Finding your Value

For an IT company, it is an important priority to survey your customers and learn what adds value for them.  If you have regular scheduled onsite meetings, this is a perfect opportunity for such dialogue. Listen to your customers.  Find out their pain points, their opportunities, risk areas, and what they and their colleagues talk about when you are not in the room.  Then, develop a strategy that adds value in your context and for your customer base.  Before you know it, they will be reaching out to you, versus you always contacting them.