Listen to the Customer … And Be Prepared to Respond
It all starts with listening to the customer. At Dell Service Provider Program, we focus on the end customer needs and priorities, and then relate them to how MSPs should approach the market.
A recent MSPmentor blog drives this point home. Stuart Crawford, consultant with Ulistic, makes the case that Dell stands out “because they are actually paying attention to the kinds of products and services MSPs need to leverage in order to properly serve their clients.”
The emergence of the “digital generation” represents a pivotal shift in customer expectations. In the United States, some 94 million millennials are entering the workforce–specifically, the SMB workforce. Those workers expect their business experience to be just like their consumer experience. They demand three things:
1. Simple-to-consume technology at a predictable price per month
2. Anywhere, anytime access to their business systems, applications and services
3. Secure access to those business resources from any device
The customer-needs discussion is one that we have with partners every day because smart MSPs understand they need to keep up with customer buying patterns–and, ideally, anticipate it.
Keep It Simple
How do MSPs respond to this new-generation challenge in the SMB space? We believe the answer lies in abstracting the complexity of technology. Stop talking about parts and pieces, and focus on solutions that drive real business value. That’s the MSP shift Dell is seeing and enabling.
To prove our commitment to MSPs, we created readily accessible, cloud-driven, pay-as-you-go solutions that let customers enjoy the consumer-based experience at work. The CloudRunner platform from Dell and SMB-focused solutions equip our partners with a white-labeled marketplace to merchandise and sell all the essential SMB IT needs.
In the CloudRunner, we packaged virtually all SMB applications and technologies into a simplified IT-as-a-service platform. This cloud-centric method enables MSPs to deliver business applications to whatever mobile devices their SMB customers prefer to use.
We also help MSPs meet their customers’ security needs with endpoint, data, email, network security and firewall protection–delivered as a service at a predictable monthly price.
Demand simple. This is what consumers are asking for. It is what your MSP business can provide through CloudRunner.
Darrin Swan, Director of Global Sales and Business Development at Dell software, is a 12-year software veteran with seven years of outsourcing transformation experience. He leads Dell’s global Service Provider partner program. From his early days as graveyard shift systems administrator; to 24/7, 365 data center management of 18 employees; to the last decade in software sales and channel leadership, Darrin’s passion for achieving IT simplicity has been the beacon for his success. His global team now helps enterprise and SMB customers shift to, and maximize their utilization of, the cloud through an ecosystem of IT-as-a-service partners enabled by Dell solutions. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.
