This morning I spoke with Sean Vojtasko, executive VP at BlueWave Computing, LLC, one of the largest MSPs (managed services providers) in the country. I was getting his input on a tech trend article I’m working on, and he mentioned something to me — almost as an aside — that I thought was so valuable that I wanted to share it with you right away.
Before I share this timely piece of wisdom, check out a few of BlueWave’s credentials: 150 employees, $20 million in revenue, 18,000 devices under management, and 400 active customers. Also, this MSP has averaged 50% year-over-year revenue growth over the past five years.
“You can’t put a customer on a fixed-fee managed services contract without first getting their network infrastructure up to par,” he says. “We see this all too often from competitors trying to sell managed services. They market a monthly flat fee service for anyone and everyone without first assessing the customer’s IT environment, and they end up losing their shirts in the end.”
For BlueWave Computing, a network assessment is a non-negotiable. And, if a new prospect doesn’t want to take this MSP’s advice and upgrade its legacy Windows XP Server, that’s fine — it’s just not going to be able to have the peace of mind that comes from being on a managed services contract. How’s that for turning the tables? ♦
How important are networking assessments to your business? (choose one)
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December 27, 2012 at 9:39 am
Great point! As a point of sale software vendor, we often receive calls from customers complaining of slowness in their multi-station systems. More often that not, its not the application that is slow, but rather its an issue with their store IT network. The issue with the network may be as simple as a loose connector – or may be serious enough to require a completer rewiring of a store. However, when you consider the opportunity costs to a retailer from a poorly performing IT system (keeping customers waiting, inefficient employees, down systems, time spent by the owner on IT issues rather than growing the business) an IT network assessment is a good investment if you are experiencing any network issues.
One other point, network reliability and speed will be increasingly be important as retailers move to web-based or cloud-based point of sale applications.
Kevin Kogler
MicroBiz Point of Sale
January 23, 2013 at 2:43 pm
Kevin,
We see this all the time. Too often what manifests as an Application Issue is really an infrastructure issue and, typically, Application Providers either don’t have responsibility or access to the infrastructure or simply do not have the in house skills to say “It’s not our application, it’s your infrastructure.” That’s where a lot of MSP’s can really shine. We work with a lot of 3rd party Application Providers to ensure that the entire customer experiences is great for everyone. In fact, one of our partners will not even allow the customer to buy their application unless BlueWave gets to perform a Network Assessment and validate that the application will perform as expected…THEN, they refer us in in performing Infrastructure maintenance for a period of six months after the initial install and include that in the customer maintenance fees…Everyone wins!