Managed Services

Pulse Technology has expanded its audio-visual offerings by creating a separate AV division and with the introduction of two new business model offerings, CRaaS (conference-room as-a-service) and AVaaS (audio-visual-as-a-service). Under this umbrella, the work includes digital Read More

This blog originally appeared on the GreatAmerica Financial Services website. Click here to read about more areas of interest in the office technology space. In my day-to-day at Collabrance, I talk to managed services providers (MSPs) who have decided it may be time to outsource Read More

Well, it’s not just office supply and print service resellers who are witnessing changes which pose both opportunities and threats to their status quo. When Sycamore Partners, the private equity firm who owns Staples, bought the office supply wholesaler Essendant, many office Read More

Anyone in business today is going to keep their eyes and ears open for new opportunity. Finding alternate and authentic paths to new, non-conventional revenue-generating products and services is harder than one might think. Occasionally, I have the pleasure of working with a Read More

In today’s BTA channel, you’d think that everyone would have mastered the MPS sales model by now, and easily built a nice portfolio of managed print renewals. I wish that were true. Launching services (MPS) from a hardware-centric industry is extremely challenging for many Read More

Yesterday, I heard about a business model, with an amazing growth track, that sells herbs across the United States. They’re not just selling plants—they’re selling an amazing dining-and-food-prep experience by helping clients focus on the things they love to do without worrying Read More

When I was a kid, I had an uncanny ability to visualize how things fit together. I could walk into a room where my younger brother had pulled apart all of his toy cars and trucks, and I could put them back together without ever seeing how he dismantled them. As a young man I rode Read More

A classic and highly debated Star Wars scene where Han Solo shoots Greedo is an unlikely thing an MSP business can actually learn from. In the movie, Greedo is a bounty hunter out to get the head of Solo. Greedo corners Solo in a bar and forces him to take a seat at gunpoint. And Read More

Across any industry, you can find products and services being sold with little to no profit. Does that mean there are no deals that offer a nice profit opportunity? In our industry, if you listen, you can hear dealers every day talk about how hard it is to make a profit selling Read More

Adding products and services to any business doesn’t automatically mean the business will grow or be more profitable. It seems the process used most often is to shove the new products into the sales bag and push the reps out the door. When adding new products, one should always Read More

Any fast wind out of the north can propel a new trend. Trends are often created by accident when a business stumbles into a unique way of delivering solutions or recognizes inefficiency and take the time to get a little inventive. Knowing what trend to follow can be a little like Read More

Everyone has their own idea on how to successfully transform a sales organization to achieve success. I’ve seen hundreds of attempts at transformation that were not successful, and they all shared one common element: the lack of a plan. Without a strategy, transformation fails. Read More

As worldwide competition pushes its way into every industry, your go-to-market strategy must adapt to the future. But how? Most leaders in our industry say that selling managed services is the way to go. Many folks say they are selling managed services, yet they are not. To Read More

A continuous drum that has been beaten in the office technology space is the ongoing movement toward offering managed services as opposed to taking a pure hardware play approach. Yet, even as dealers successfully ramp their capabilities in MPS, managed IT, document services, Read More

Recently, in a workshop at the Las Vegas ITEX trade show, I shared my high-level process to successfully transform a dealership from traditional hardware sales to managed services. I have refined my transformation process over the last 10 years, and for most dealers it takes Read More