Enterprises, SMBs: You don’t have to do it all in house, once you master these tips for signing the right SPs.
Those of you clutching onto your larger team for fear you’ll lose control, stop it!
It’s this misnomer that has CIOs, CTOs, and their influencers painting themselves into a corner, creating redundancies and wasting time and cash.
“I think the legacy perspective some of these IT leaders have today, especially in the Midwest, is they would lose control of their resources if they used someone else’s platform. It’s the idea that if they’re using someone else’s people, then it’s not really theirs anymore,” explains Chance Irvine, Vice President of IT Operations and Technology Procurement at Proxibid.
Proxibid’s Proven Success with Choosing SPs
Irvine has spent the past six years proving that signing with the right solution provider can transform your business —holding down head count and fostering partnerships with technology experts hard to sustain by an individual company.
Proxibid is a trusted platform that connects buyers and sellers of highly valued items through flexible sales methods.
“Prior to this mindset at Proxibid, there had been some customers who had decided to move to other platforms because of some reliability issues. We’ve been able to get back all of those major customers that had been lost previously, so that’s an excellent success story there,” says Irvine.
Jumpstarting that success was partnering with solution provider Rackspace, one of several companies Proxibid vetted.
Now, Irvine is sharing some of the questions he asks himself before choosing solution providers to work with his team.
5 Questions to Ask Yourself When Picking a Solution Provider
- Can they operate as an extension of your team? This is especially the case for small companies like Proxibid (less than 200 employees). “We need to utilize someone else’s assets on an as-needed, just-in-time basis,” says Irvine.
- Do they have a depth of experience in areas your company has a need? We benefit from the BIG-IP F5 solution, but we don’t have an F 5 expert on our internal staff. We benefit from our hosting partner providing the necessary, in-depth skillset for that area. We engage with them and they make changes and configurations based on the business needs we discuss and manage. Larger companies could benefit the same way. They may be able to maintain fewer internal personnel certified at that particular skillset,” suggests Irvine.
- What’s their contract flexibility/plan for a long-term relationship? “What we’ve experienced in the approach Rackspace has brought for us, is they’re more concerned in the long-term relationship. Sure, they want to sign something for the immediate period, but they’ve done it in a way where if our business changes in a shorter timeframe, and it will, and it has for us, they’ve allowed us to right-size our solutions without extending the original timeframe of the agreement, because that’s what our business needed at the time,” says Irvine. “Rackspace is interested in working with us as our business changes, ebbs, and flows.”
- How do our expectations compare to probable savings in money and manpower? “Cloud adoption and outsourcing is not magic and redeploying what you have, as is, in the cloud often is more expensive than what you have today. The true value comes when you can take advantage of a robust managed services approach as an extension of your team and move toward elastic compute strategies. There is usually a strong value-based ROI to be attained, but you must map your company’s needs against these principles to truly identify it. It is a different perspective to managing resources.”
- Have you identified a proper point of contact internally? “If you don’t have yourself or somebody identified who’s going to have good, constant communication throughout the process, you’re going to be at risk of being off base when you’re ready for delivery,” says Irvine. A large company would likely use a project management office.
Having a venue to meet these potential partners is also a hurdle. That’s where events such as The Channel Company’s Midsize Enterprise Summit (MES) have helped. “I’ve met some great professionals from all over the country and from all different kinds of businesses,” says Irvine, who has been on the advisory board for four years. “I can reach out to my network of MES professionals, and there will be one to ten people responding with numerous ways they’ve gone about solving a particular problem. Some of them will provide you with great insights on providers.”
MES offers IT decision makers exclusive access to more than 80+ top vendors, seasoned Gartner analysts and an elite group of peers. Sign up for the next event—September 17 to 19 in San Antonio, TX.
