When it comes to social business tools, they aren’t your typical IT project because they involve human communication, but in spite of many benefits, these projects often fail. Here’s why.
Read my full article on CITEworld.
Photo Credit: CanStockPhoto
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Microsoft paid a hefty price for Yammer, so it’s only right that it’s using the tool internally as its enterprise social network and reaping the benefits through reduced email.
Read my full story on CITEworld.
Photo Credit: CanStockPhoto
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MSPs have to be thought leaders for clients around mobile, social and cloud.
There are a number of trends having a significant impact on IT these days including mobile, social and the cloud –and if these changes are affecting in-house IT shops, than as a managed service provider (MSP), you need to be paying attention too –and helping lead your clients into the future.
It’s always tricky when it comes to presenting new methods of doing things. Sometimes your clients will be open to hearing about these new ways of doing business, and other times quite the opposite, but if you want to be seen as a thought leader, sometimes you have to show your clients the way.
Chuck Cailo writing on the Midsize Insider blog recently offered some insight on how to take your MSP business into the future. From a mobile perspective, you could encourage your clients to move toward a Bring Your Own Device strategy and offer ways to secure those devices, or more importantly the enterprise data and content on that device as it goes in motion.
Securing content in motion is truly the new enterprise content management imperative. That’s because content is no longer stored behind the cozy confines of your client’s firewall while employees sit at beige boxes and do their work. On the contrary it’s on the move and your client’s employees are accessing and using that content on a variety of devices. It’s up to you as MSP to show your clients the way and suggest ways of securing that content as it moves in the world.
Being social doesn’t necessarily mean using public social networks like Google Plus, Facebook and LinkedIn–although that can be part of any strategy–but it also involves building internal social networks to improve communication, flatten hierarchies, encourage innovation and provide a way to identify subject experts and share knowledge.
There are many examples of successful social networks such as this one from health insurer Humana, which has successfully implemented an enterprise social network with over 26,000 members and growing in just 3 years. But building a network of this type presents unique challenges and the enterprise is littered with stories of failure and abandonment. As a trusted MSP, you are in a position to lead the way helping your customer build a successful enterprise social network.
As for the cloud, which can be the glue holding mobile and social together, offering ways to give you access to services on any device, anywhere, anytime. And you can become almost an OEM for cloud services if you can find ways to package cloud services in a creative way taking advantage of APIs to build cloud solutions. You can work with your customers to understand the options, whether it’s infrastructure or platform or software being offered as a service in the cloud
Once you’ve built your own expertise around different cloud offerings you can help steer your clients toward the offerings and approaches that make most sense to them.
As mobile, social and cloud along with consumerization and bring your device (BYOD) take hold in the enterprise, it’s up to MSPs to become experts and thought leaders around these technologies and to lead your customers when necessary to the approaches that make most sense for each one.
Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
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Managed service providers are simply outsourced IT services and as such they need to transform just like any other IT shop, whether that’s changing your salesforce to be more social or listening to your customers better.
In fact, most IT shops, even the ones that aren’t service bureaus are turning to a customer-oriented philosophy. At the MIT Sloan CIO Symposium in Cambridge this week, CIOs talked a lot of the changing role of IT in organizations and it had a lot do with partnering with the business units instead of dictating to them.
As a service bureau, MSPs might not have exactly the same role but there are surely some similarities and you can draw from some of the same lessons. As Timothy Tsao wrote on the Midsize Insider blog, the MSP is being subject to the same pressures as the in-house IT department as technology is disrupting the role.
In the case of MSPs, it’s commoditization, a phenomenon that tends to happen when markets mature and there is little to differentiate the different players in the market. In that case, disruption usually follows and companies who can’t adapt or either get bought, merge or in the most extreme cases go out of business.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. This is not a fait accomplis. As Tsao writes there are ways to pull yourself from that abyss starting with finding ways to differentiate yourself from the competition. As Seth Godin said during a keynote address at the AIIM conference in March. speaking of differentiating your company from the rest of the market, “What we don’t need is yet another bird in the flock doing it the same way.” What he means is you need to try something different even if it’s a bit radical on its face.
In his post Tsao suggest some rather modest steps you can take, but what you don’t want to do is watch while your market gets undercut because as Godin also said at the same speech: “You know what wrong with the race to the bottom? You might win.” And that’s definitely a battle you don’t want to win.
The trouble is these days, most people think they know how to do your job. As Sanjay Mirchandani EVP, EMC said during a panel discussion at the MIT CIO Sloan Symposium last week, “I support 60,000 users and 59,999 think they have my job.” It got a big laugh from the mostly CIO audience because they recognized that all too well.
Your goal has to be to look at ways to make your MSP more indispensable whether that’s changing the focus of your of your sales approach or offering cloud services. You might want to try embracing social as well because you need to be listening to what your customers are saying because chances are they are on social networks talking to one another and even offering you ideas about new service offerings.
Whatever you do, do something because sitting still and hoping for the best is not an option. You have to be proactive and you have to start now.
Photo Credit: (c) Can Stock Photo
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
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