Profile: The solution provider has kept busy evangelizing the managed services model to customers.Michael drake planned everything meticulously. He knew he needed a profitable financial model, the right business tools and an experienced partner to deliver IT services.
So in founding his business, Drake decided on the managed services model, the managed services platform from N-able Technologies and a partnership with solution provider Wisetech to handle the technical side.
Drake’s company, MasterIT, of Bartlett, Tenn., also needed a compelling marketing message. Without it, Drake knew, everything else would fall short. That’s how he came up with a message that revolves around the “fire prevention” approach to IT, a message he evangelizes vigorously to customers.
Drake formed MasterIT in July 2005, becoming its chief executive. MasterIT started beta testing its services delivery about a year later and, in August 2006, officially opened for business. As of late January 2007, the company had 18 customers.
Solution providers help customers go green. Click here to read more.
“We slowed down some in December and January due, in part, to the holiday season and in part to our own slowdown to concentrate on delivery,” Drake said. “This was conscious because we are intentional about client service. Turning up a new offering with a new NOC [network operations center], CRM [customer resource management], ticketing system, reporting methodology and project management is a serious undertaking.”
But before getting to the point of pushing the “on” switch with customers, a lot of work has to happen. For one thing, evangelizing the message is critical, Drake said. IT users, after all, are accustomed to viewing service providers from a remediation perspective. With managed services, the goal is prevention through Web connections to monitor and manage clients’ computing environments.
To win over customers, MasterIT invites decision makers to events during which executives discuss the advantages of the managed services model. The company also conducts IT assessments to propose more efficient approaches to the use of computing and telecommunications technology.
Typically, said Drake, the company finds that about one-third of IT environments are so out-of-date they should be discarded. In addition, clients usually save up to 30 percent of their IT budgets by going the managed services route, he said. “Once we give them that deliverable, we’re batting 1,000,” Drake said.
The reason MasterIT has been successful, said Mike Cullen, vice president of sales at Ottawa-based N-able, is that Drake and his team have been diligent about understanding the managed services model. For instance, Cullen said, MasterIT has tapped N-able’s resources to guide channel companies through adoption of the managed services model. “I don’t think anybody has taken advantage of our business transformation services more than Mike [Drake] has,” Cullen said.
Drake said he put to use his financial background and leveraged banking relationships to provide customers with credit models such as hardware as a service, through which customers essentially lease equipment rather than buy it.
Click here for exclusive channel research from Amazon Consulting.
Also key to MasterIT’s success was the decision to team up with Wisetech, of Memphis, Tenn. Founded by Gary Wiseman in 2000, Wisetech had built up a solid roster of customers, most of which Wiseman, now president of MasterIT, hopes will convert to the managed services approach. Ten percent of Wisetech’s customers have already converted, and another 40 percent have committed to it, said Wiseman.
Wiseman said he will phase out the Wisetech name this year as the MasterIT brand establishes itself. He said he embraced the MasterIT model as soon as Drake proposed a partnership, knowing that managed services carries a higher value proposition for customers than the old break/fix approach. Of course, MasterIT has to execute, Wiseman said, adding that he is fully confident it will. The company will also give competitors a run for their money, he added.
“Anybody can say they can do managed services, but it really comes down to executing, and that’s where we’re going to excel,” Wiseman said.
