{"id":15282,"date":"2015-11-18T10:28:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-18T18:28:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=15282"},"modified":"2016-09-15T09:42:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T16:42:22","slug":"continuum-ceo-michael-george-on-how-continuum-can-bring-office-technology-dealers-into-the-managed-it-services-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/feature-articles\/2015\/11\/continuum-ceo-michael-george-on-how-continuum-can-bring-office-technology-dealers-into-the-managed-it-services-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Continuum CEO Michael George on How Continuum Can Bring Office Technology Dealers into the Managed IT Services Space"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael

Michael George<\/p><\/div>\n

If it\u2019s not obvious to office technology dealers that IT services represent a huge opportunity and an opportunity that will enable them to remain relevant to their customers and potential customers far into the future, then maybe they ought to start packing it in right now.<\/p>\n

Okay, that\u2019s an over exaggeration, but anyone paying attention to what\u2019s happening within the office technology dealer channel is well aware that there\u2019s a lot of talk and a fair amount of hype around IT services. Some cynics may consider it the service de jour rightfully or wrongfully so, but no matter one\u2019s views, it\u2019s still important to be aware of the various opportunities available to assist office technology dealers interested in trying something different to move into that space.<\/p>\n

One IT services organization intent on growing its presence in the office technology channel is Continuum Managed IT Services. The Boston-based company provides a SaaS-based Managed Services platform for Managed Services Provider (MSP) partners, including office technology dealers, to use for backup, monitoring, troubleshooting, and maintaining desktops, servers and other endpoints in SMBs.<\/p>\n

CEO Michael George has been with the company since 2011 when it was acquired by Summit Partners, a private equity firm, and has been instrumental in transitioning what was once a remote monitoring and management company into a leading provider of\u00a0IT Services to MSPs.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The year is winding down, how\u2019s the past 12 months been for Continuum?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>From a calendar perspective it\u2019s winding down, but from a business perspective it\u2019s just continuing to spin up. It\u2019s been a terrific year overall and arguably a spectacular year in the office equipment category in particular. The dealer channel just totally gets it and is lining up and getting their businesses aligned around the way we\u2019ve engineered ourselves to go to market with them. It\u2019s been an off-the-rails year for us and our partners.<\/p>\n

It sounds like you\u2019re happy with the inroads you\u2019ve made so far with the office technology dealer segment?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>Like anybody running a business I live in a world of discontent. We always know we can do more and do better and I certainly feel that way about our own business. By and large we\u2019re very happy. The only thing that people need to do is to overcome their fears and\u00a0their past experiences.<\/p>\n

The thing we do uniquely is help the office equipment dealers overcome their biggest obstacle right out of the gate. We bring a fully integrated services delivery model that\u2019s not just software that would force them to go out and figure out how to sell it, how to support it, and how to build an IT staff. We come with all of that ready made.<\/p>\n

Clearly you bring a lot to the table, especially for an office technology dealer starting from Ground Zero?<\/em><\/p>\n

George:<\/strong> We have a large NOC operation in Mumbai, India. We have a large and growing Help Desk operation in Pittsburgh, PA, and we [can help overcome] the greatest barrier for office equipment dealers who have entered this market before, which is how to begin and how to identify an IT skills CIO who can bring this to market. They don\u2019t know how to hire one internally or externally and build it out that way.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve got to overcome their fears and not think about Continuum in the way they might have tried to approach this market opportunity in the past. It\u2019s a completely new and revolutionary way in which we\u2019ve married our go to market and our service delivery mapped to the way the office equipment dealer already knows how to do business.<\/p>\n

When you first speak to a dealer about partnering with you, what are some of the questions you tend to hear over and over again?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>This is where they bring the legacy of their prior experiences forward. They\u2019re asking a lot of questions around how do I identify these kinds of people, how do I go out and hire them, how do I train them, and how do I mix the cultures of a traditional office equipment dealer with the new IT services orientation? They ask that because they\u2019ve either tried it themselves and experienced some level of failure or they\u2019ve never tried it because they’ve heard time and time again how challenging it is to enter this market.<\/p>\n

Those are the kinds of things that have formed people\u2019s opinions of the market in the past and we\u2019re answering a lot of those questions by saying you don\u2019t need to do that anymore. We help you. We\u2019ll go out, we have a spec, and we\u2019ll help you identify what we call a virtual CIO. We have a lot of them in our own network. We bring them to you.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve also come up with a formula that allows dealers to use existing sales people to sell IT services, tell me about that?<\/em><\/p>\n

George:<\/strong> In terms of sales, a lot of people say, \u201cI have a guy who has been one of my top producers, he\u2019s been with the company for 22 years, he\u2019s a leading office equipment sales rep and I\u2019m having a hard time reconfiguring him into a sales rep for IT services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Our response is you shouldn\u2019t do that. There\u2019s no purpose retraining these people. We have a list of six qualifying questions we give to our partners, and what they need to do is teach that rep who knows how to sell office equipment to go out to their own customer base and ask these six fundamental questions.<\/p>\n

People are intimidated by IT and think it\u2019s a very technical category and that they need to know detailed things about MS Office 365, or Windows Version 13, or whatever. The fact is it\u2019s not technical at all. It\u2019s very business oriented. We provide sales training for our office equipment partners to help them understand that they\u2019re not out there to talk technical and they\u2019re not out there to sell. What they\u2019re out there to do is identify opportunities in their existing customer base. Once they do that, we have an engagement model that involves their virtual CIO and our support staff in going through the process of selling that account on their behalf.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very different. They\u2019re not retraining people, they\u2019re not repurposing them, they\u2019re just getting them to ask a simple set of questions that enable them to be effective right away.<\/p>\n

For someone who hasn\u2019t partnered with Continuum yet and then decides to contact you after reading this interview, what are some of the questions that they should be prepared to answer?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>For us it\u2019s simple and centered around people\u2019s commitment to not only wanting to be in this space, but to be a leader in this category. [They must be there] mentally and made a decision and commitment to be in a position to have a new revenue stream or be in a position where they have something to arm themselves to go and steal customers from competitors. They have to be motivated by one of those things or to defend their territory.<\/p>\n

Why do office technology dealers choose you?<\/em><\/p>\n

George:<\/strong> We have some office equipment dealers who come to us because some of their traditional, longstanding customers are getting picked away by competitors who have Managed IT Services in their portfolio.<\/p>\n

They need to be defending the territory although we don\u2019t want people who just want to defend their territory, we want people to go dominate their territory and category, and have a meaningful amount of revenue coming from this category.<\/p>\n

Dealers who have partnered with Continuum have enjoyed some serious success already haven\u2019t they? <\/em><\/p>\n

George:<\/strong> We started with people that are in the more than $100 million office equipment space that are now equal in size in IT services. If you look at some of the largest players out there, $60-million, $70-million office equipment dealers, they are now doing $60- and $70-million worth of IT services. That\u2019s phenomenal growth. They\u2019re building real businesses and getting a growth engine in place and they\u2019re committing to it.<\/p>\n

Now they\u2019ve gotten through the first year, gotten through the proof points, and are excited about the category they\u2019re starting to put their shoulder into it and say these are great gross margins, this is a great growth driver for me, I\u2019m stealing customers from my competitors, I\u2019m expanding my geography, whatever it is on their ambition road map is now being fulfilled, and they\u2019re getting excited about it and putting more into it. That\u2019s the experience we\u2019ve had with the ones that engage with us.<\/p>\n

Is there a sweet spot revenue wise for the types of dealers that are the best fit for working with you?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>They are typically dealers that are at least $10 million and above. We\u2019ve got plenty that are\u00a0smaller than that and we\u2019ve been successful with them too.<\/p>\n

Once you\u2019re in the $8-$10 to $12 million mark, you\u2019ve got a large enough customer base that if you can go out and capture five or ten percent of it with IT services [you\u2019ll add] 50 percent more revenue to your top line.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your take on growing one\u2019s MS business via acquisition?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>A lot of this industry and companies grew by acquiring another dealer or another geography, or acquiring a slightly different product line, so there is a good acquisition DNA in this industry to begin with. It\u2019s not foreign to this market at all and we\u2019ve had some phenomenal successes where an office equipment dealer, it could be $20-$25 million, even a $10-million dealer [ that has acquired an MSP]. The cost of an MSP is actually relatively low.<\/p>\n

An MSP can be acquired easily and it gives the dealer sort of instant “just add water” capacity, capability, knowledge, everything. What they do is redeploy those skills towards being these internal virtual CIOs. Acquisitions have jumpstarted a number of companies in the office equipment space, enabling them to be instantly credible, having instant capacity, instant everything at a low cost on a relative basis. By the way, those MSPs are bringing a book of business with them already. They wouldn\u2019t be where they are already without a sustainable line of business on the IT side.<\/p>\n

We have equipment dealers that come to us and say \u201cI want to buy somebody\u201d and we have plenty of MSPs who say \u201cIf the right acquirer came along I\u2019d definitely jump in and stay with the business and run it under somebody else\u2019s banner and build it out.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Acquired MSPs] know that the office equipment dealer is bringing to them a big, more easily attainable market because there are already customers of theirs so the selling side of the equation becomes a lot easier when you\u2019re selling IT services to an existing customer. While you had a transactional relationship with them at least you had that relationship.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t give guidance as to whether you should or shouldn\u2019t do it unless I know about your certain set of circumstances. That\u2019s been our experience in the market so far and it\u2019s been phenomenal so far for the office equipment dealers jumping in. It\u2019s instant capacity and credibility and it\u2019s been great for Managed Service providers that have stayed with them through the continued growth.<\/p>\n

What can we expect from Continuum in 2016?<\/em><\/p>\n

George: <\/strong>A lot more around sales enablement and marketing enablement. We\u2019re really helping our partners go to market. We\u2019re putting more and better resources and energy into the sales and training side and everything they need to be completely self sufficient and fully enabled as they continue to build out their businesses<\/p>\n

We have Continuum University for online training. And for our office equipment dealers specifically, we\u2019ll provide in-person sales training sessions and guide teams with six key qualifying questions that identify whether or not they are ready to be in this space. We\u2019ve partnered with Mitch Morgan and Chris Ryne at Growth Achievement Partners (GAP), as well as Ed McLaughlin, former CEO of Sharp, who is a key advisor for training and industry guidance. Together with GAP, we produced the first of its kind, revolutionary business model, \u201cManaged IT Services Business Model Report,\u201d that demonstrates how dealers are able to achieve over 60 percent pre-labor gross margins with managed IT services. We also provide a wide array of white labeled tools. Our office equipment dealers look like they own this whole thing lock, stock and barrel. There\u2019s a pride of ownership and a proprietary nature associated with the relationship to IT services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If it\u2019s not obvious to office technology dealers that IT services represent a huge opportunity and an opportunity that will enable them to remain relevant to their customers and potential customers far into the future, then maybe they ought to start packing it in right now. Okay, that\u2019s an over exaggeration, but anyone paying attention to what\u2019s happening within the office technology dealer channel is well aware that there\u2019s a lot of talk and a fair amount of hype around IT services. Some cynics may consider it the service de jour rightfully or wrongfully so, but no matter one\u2019s views, it\u2019s still important to be aware of the various opportunities available to assist office technology dealers interested in trying something different to move into that space. One IT services organization intent on growing its presence in the office technology channel is Continuum Managed IT Services. The Boston-based company provides a SaaS-based Managed Services platform for Managed Services Provider (MSP) partners, including office technology dealers, to use for backup, monitoring, troubleshooting, and maintaining desktops, servers and other endpoints in SMBs. CEO Michael George has been with the company since 2011 when it was acquired by Summit Partners, a private equity firm, and has been instrumental in transitioning what was once a remote monitoring and management company into a leading provider of\u00a0IT Services to MSPs.\u00a0 The year is winding down, how\u2019s the past 12 months been for Continuum? George: From a calendar perspective it\u2019s winding down, but from a business perspective it\u2019s just continuing to spin up. It\u2019s been a terrific year overall and arguably a spectacular year in the office equipment category in particular. The dealer channel just totally gets it and is lining up and getting their businesses aligned around the way we\u2019ve engineered ourselves to go to market with them. It\u2019s been an off-the-rails year for us and our partners. It sounds like you\u2019re happy with the inroads you\u2019ve made so far with the office technology dealer segment? George: Like anybody running a business I live in a world of discontent. We always know we can do more and do better and I certainly feel that way about our own business. By and large we\u2019re very happy. The only thing that people need to do is to overcome their fears and\u00a0their past experiences. The thing we do uniquely is help the office equipment dealers overcome their biggest obstacle right out of the gate. We bring a fully integrated services delivery model that\u2019s not just software that would force them to go out and figure out how to sell it, how to support it, and how to build an IT staff. We come with all of that ready made. Clearly you bring a lot to the table, especially for an office technology dealer starting from Ground Zero? George: We have a large NOC operation in Mumbai, India. We have a large and growing Help Desk operation in Pittsburgh, PA, and we [can help overcome] the greatest barrier for office equipment dealers who have entered this market before, which is how to begin and how to identify an IT skills CIO who can bring this to market. They don\u2019t know how to hire one internally or externally and build it out that way. They\u2019ve got to overcome their fears and not think about Continuum in the way they might have tried to approach this market opportunity in the past. It\u2019s a completely new and revolutionary way in which we\u2019ve married our go to market and our service delivery mapped to the way the office equipment dealer already knows how to do business. When you first speak to a dealer about partnering with you, what are some of the questions you tend to hear over and over again? George: This is where they bring the legacy of their prior experiences forward. They\u2019re asking a lot of questions around how do I identify these kinds of people, how do I go out and hire them, how do I train them, and how do I mix the cultures of a traditional office equipment dealer with the new IT services orientation? They ask that because they\u2019ve either tried it themselves and experienced some level of failure or they\u2019ve never tried it because they’ve heard time and time again how challenging it is to enter this market. Those are the kinds of things that have formed people\u2019s opinions of the market in the past and we\u2019re answering a lot of those questions by saying you don\u2019t need to do that anymore. We help you. We\u2019ll go out, we have a spec, and we\u2019ll help you identify what we call a virtual CIO. We have a lot of them in our own network. We bring them to you. You\u2019ve also come up with a formula that allows dealers to use existing sales people to sell IT services, tell me about that? George: In terms of sales, a lot of people say, \u201cI have a guy who has been one of my top producers, he\u2019s been with the company for 22 years, he\u2019s a leading office equipment sales rep and I\u2019m having a hard time reconfiguring him into a sales rep for IT services.\u201d Our response is you shouldn\u2019t do that. There\u2019s no purpose retraining these people. We have a list of six qualifying questions we give to our partners, and what they need to do is teach that rep who knows how to sell office equipment to go out to their own customer base and ask these six fundamental questions. People are intimidated by IT and think it\u2019s a very technical category and that they need to know detailed things about MS Office 365, or Windows Version 13, or whatever. The fact is it\u2019s not technical at all. It\u2019s very business oriented. We provide sales training for our office equipment partners to help them understand that they\u2019re not out there to talk technical and they\u2019re not out there to sell. What they\u2019re out there to do is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[82,1638],"tags":[1873,233,2533],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15282"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15282"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15370,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15282\/revisions\/15370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}