BETTER BUSINESS
Specialist Software Services Provision The Soft Shoulder Neil O’Sullivan spoke to Mark Little, CEO, Fusion Business Solutions
Since its inception, Fusion has changed lanes into software service provision to overtake the competition. Mark Little tells us how his company fits into today’s ever evolving marketplace.
NETCOMMS.EUROPE: What is Fusion, and what does it offer?
MARK LITTLE: Fusion was set up 15 years ago as a reseller of a product called Remedy, which was acquired by BMC Software around 10 years ago. BMC is focused on software for IT departments, operations and service management. Our company’s heritage was on the service management side, implementing service desks, change management systems, asset management systems, etc. One of the fastest growing sections of the market for us at the moment is IT self-service portals.
NE: Why would a client come to you?
ML: I think there are probably two dimensions to this. Firstly, we’re not a software manufacturer; we’re a software service provider. Our focus is on helping customers implement software that combines with the process and the people to get a real result. As a service provider, if we don’t get that right, customers can easily switch from us. It’s always harder to switch from a vendor. This mean’s it’s essential for us to focus closely on the customer side of things. Secondly, we consider ourselves experts in a small number of areas. We’re a niche company and we really only have two areas of expertise: IT service management and IT operations around specific skill processes within the data centre.
NE: Do you only work with BMC software?
ML: At this moment we deal solely with BMC software. We think BMC are in a very strong position in the market. If you take the whole cloud side of things, the extent to which BMC are investing in that at the moment is going to put them in a very strong position as the market grows.
NE: So do customers come to you because they like BMC software, or because they like what you do specifically?
ML: We look for customers that want to use the BMC software, so BMC are creating demand in those customers
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for their product in some respects. We help to go in and execute on the basis of that demand. I would say that for the most part, however, customers come to us because they are looking for a requirement in a certain area to be fulfilled. We’re able to match that with the BMC product set if it’s within the area that we operate in. We’re able to tell if it is or not straight away. For example, we don’t do network management software and neither does BMC. If the customer asks about that we’ll tell them to go and talk to somebody else. But if they want help with network configuration, then we can offer them a solution in that area.
NE: Could they go straight to the software company for this?
ML: BMC work via a typical channel model. Big organisations usually like to have some sort of direct relationship with the vendor. BMC will also deal directly with the big systems integrators and outsourcers. For other levels in the market, we would deal directly with the customer. We would sometimes work to help systems integrators implement the tool sets but BMC would often deal with this directly. It really depends on the size of the customer and what they want. Some companies will want to deal
directly with the vendor, believing that they will get more comprehensive technical support. Others will see that even if they are spending a lot of money with a very large software companies, they will still be fairly low priority, so they will get a better service going to a service provider.
NE: Do you think the role of the service provider is given ample recognition by the industry?
ML: I think it’s not fully appreciated in the industry in general, and I’ll tell you why. Our view is that software is no use on its own. You only get some benefit out of software if you define upfront what you’re trying to achieve with it, what the goals are, whether these are cost-based, quality-based or satisfaction- based. Then you have to take your software, embed it into your processes and mould the processes around it. If you don’t do that, you’re not going to
get the results you’re looking for. There are many occasions in the IT business where companies don’t get what they want, having spent quite a lot of money on software. Service providers can help because
they have a very holistic approach to help customers achieve their aims. That doesn’t mean it works all the time because some customers still don’t buy into that message. We feel very strongly that a software vendor’s raison d’etre is to sell software. They want it to work but they have to have something to show at the end of each quarter so ultimately the business is about shifting units. There is a big role for service providers in this context. This might not be in the traditional reselling way, as some people think. Sevice providers do do reselling but I think their offering is much more holistic than that. We develop very long term
relationships with our customers. We are able to think about service in the long term because we don’t have to demonstrate our performance every quarter.
NE: How do you demonstrate a return on investment for your customers?
ML: I think you have to start with what you are trying to achieve. If you’re trying to reduce costs in a certain area, you need to think about what the cost of administration and management per server is. You then take that metric and see how you can improve it. Software can help this. Take network configuration. If you want to increase the efficiency of your network team, in an organisation that has 100 network devices, we can give the proof point to show that we can reduce the cost of running those by anywhere between 40 and 80%. This is done through software and also through refining the process. As we’re a service provider, we have to be able to support these projections, or the customer won’t come back.
NE: How would you go about improving a company’s green credentials?
ML: We would normally start with a baseline assessment of where the company is at the moment. This is a
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