Tuesday, January 25, 2011

OS/2 Reborn: The Future of Business in the Cloud

By: Jay McBain, Senior Vice President, Strategy and Market Development

First off, to those of you born after 1980, I apologize for the cryptic reference in the title – here is a primer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os/2.

For the rest of us, a question:

“Beyond the hype and near-religious arguments, what was the one key differentiating feature that OS/2 had that Windows 3.1 did not have back in the day?”

Friday, January 14, 2011

The Perfect Year in the Life of an IT Solution Provider

By: Len DiCostanzo, SVP and Dean of Autotask Academy

When VARs, MSPs and IT solution providers evolve their businesses to include a managed services practice, the goal is to deliver recurring services to ensure recurring revenue and recurring profit. While it’s not so easy as to convert to this model overnight, start by identifying an entry point to deliver managed services to a new or existing client and build your practice over time. Let’s take a cross-section of one year operating with this business model and discuss how you can build a similar practice layer by layer.

Monday, December 20, 2010

Benchmark Your Business to the Next Level

By: Len DiCostanzo, SVP and Dean of Autotask Academy

If you’ve instituted surveys as part of your customer satisfaction program, the next step is to understand the how and why of maximizing the data you have collected from your customers.

That’s where benchmarking comes in. For the IT services industry, surveys give you an opportunity to measure your customer satisfaction levels and a variety of key performance indicators (KPIs) against an industry baseline (created by aggregating similar ratings across an anonymous population of MSPs, VARs and other technology solution providers).

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

The Importance of Taking Your Customer’s Pulse

By: Bob Godgart, Founder, Chairman, and Chief Visionary Officer

In a previous article, I talked about the 10 benefits of using surveys in your service provider business. But if you still feel surveys are a “nice to have” rather than a “need to do” (despite knowing how surveys increase customer retention, improve product and service delivery and create competitive advantage), let me convince you otherwise.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Do You Survey Your Customers and Prospects for Anything?

By: Len DiCostanzo, SVP and Dean of Autotask Academy

On the road again - here in Orlando, Florida at the MSP University Boot Camp. There are over 125 IT solution providers in attendance who are in various stages of business, running the gamut of industry business models. From box pushers to pure service providers, from break fix to managed service providers and one-stop solution providers. Quite a few are just starting out, some have been in business over 20 years, and everything else in between. And they are all looking to build a managed services practice or validate where their practice or business stands, and discover the next steps they should take to grow their business.