MARKET REVIEW Professional services drive
The role of third party support companies has become far more strategic over the last 12 months, moving away from traditional stock in trade support functions towards customer collaboration and professional services.
Richard Eglon
companies trying to make cost savings and increase efficiencies, and never more so than in the current economic turbulence. “With shrinking budgets and revenue streams under threat many organisations are faced with making difficult decisions about the future structure of IT support services and staffing,” stated Darren Briscoe, Technical Director, Comms-care. “Outsourcing is now vital to the ongoing support of end user infrastructure in order for depleted partner teams to effectively support activities within their customer environments. Where geography or lack to of technical skills is an issue, Comms-care is increasingly finding that partners are turning to third party maintenance providers to assist.”
O
utsourcing has long been a difficult proposition for
Richard Eglon, Marketing Manager at Comms-care, noted: “In the last four years Comms-care has developed its service proposition in line with partner demand and now sees a 50:50 split between server and comms support, adopting support services across server vendors including HP, Dell, IBM and Fujitsu. Comms-care has also experienced high demand for professional services, as partners want specialist installation and consultancy skills across technologies including wireless, unified communications, security, enterprise servers and IP telephony.”
According to Darren Briscoe, Technical Director at Comms- care, Outsourcing has long been a difficult proposition for companies trying to make cost savings and increase efficiencies, and never more so than for SMEs in the current economic turbulence. “Key to Comms-
care’s success is delivering the consistent message that however small the requirement don’t be afraid to ask for assistance, simply expand your services by outsourcing. There are many ways we can help smaller partners with the use of SLA based vouchers schemes for emergencies, free pre-sales, design consultancy and fixed project costs whereby Comms-care carries all the risk of projects over running. The message is simple, any size partner business can benefit from outsourcing.”
Greater reliance
The challenging economic climate in recent years has had a huge impact on the outsourcing arena. In order to survive, resellers have had to adopt a much more flexible approach to the needs of their customers, resulting in a greater reliance on outsourcing services. “Organisations have had to streamline their businesses in this period of uncertainty, leading to a reduction of in- house skill sets, geographic coverage and day-to- day resource,” observed Eglon. “To plug these gaps the cost-effectiveness of outsourcing has been much more straightforward to justify, though it is highly recommend that organisations looking to outsource ensure vigorous
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due diligence is undergone on any outsourcing partner.”
Concentrating on the core business is a sound plan in the current climate, points out Briscoe. “It’s easy to become distracted when trying to grow a business in a volatile economy,” he said. “Focusing on the your strengths and the best you have to offer, while still allowing for growth through strategic partnerships is a good way to improve margins, without the risk of over stretching the core business. Outsourcing to third parties is an effective way to achieve this.”
Trends in third party maintenance and support over the last 12 months have shifted from using an outsourcer on an ad hoc, only when needed basis to outsourcing the complete solution including pre-install meeting, project management, installation, commission and customer training. That’s according to Paul Ballinger, Sales Director at Nine Shipton, who says that just 12 months
ago the firm was fulfilling basic small SME installs for the channel, but today it finds itself involved in the sale cycle, positioning project management and professional services at a higher value. “This elevates the channel’s offer, delivers a clean installation, improves customer satisfaction and gets the invoice paid on time,” commented Ballinger.
Each of Nine Shipton’s engineers has a six month solution accreditation plan with the appropriate vendor. “It’s important to our channel partners that we continue to deliver a highly accredited engineering resource across a range of key vendors,” added Ballinger. “It has always been the ethos at Nine to deliver what we do well and our sights are set on maintaining that commitment.”
When Nine is engaged early in the sales cycle and providing a joined up offer with the channel, it wins 90 per cent of the opportunities and some of these have been valued in excess of £100k. “A channel can supplement their
Organisations
have had to streamline their businesses
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