MSP 501 Profile: Dresner Group Differentiates with Proactive IT Maintenance

… warnings and advice that Dresner Group has been giving for years.

Frankly, businesses in general were nowhere near prepared for circumstances like these. It’s hard to blame them, though. I don’t think anyone expected that a virus could effectively bring most of the world to a halt for so long. Unfortunately, it did, and most business owners just weren’t ready to deal with the ramifications, so they have had to improvise.

Of course, there have been a few silver linings, so to speak. While I don’t want to trivialize how serious the COVID-19 virus is, it has certainly highlighted the value of some business technologies. In particular, those that enable remote work and mobile productivity, like cloud computing and the requisite security it demands. Having many employees furloughed or working from home for so long also gave those businesses that could, the opportunity to make needed renovations and upgrades to their office infrastructure.

So, while there is no arguing that COVID-19 will go down in history as a thoroughly negative event, I feel that there’s bound to be a positive revolution in how businesses operate afterwards.

CF: What do you love about the IT channel? What do you hate about it?

MD: Honestly, there’s not much I could say that I really hate about the IT channel. While there are the occasional challenges to contend with, the same could be said for any industry.

What can’t be said for many industries is how collaborative the overall industry is. By its very nature, there’s a sort of camaraderie between IT service providers. We’ve all heard the same horror stories and have the same recurring issues that frustrate us. We can respect each other’s work when the work was done respectably.

You know that saying, that “a rising tide raises all ships?” That’s basically how the IT industry works. When a new discovery is made, there’s a lot of sharing that goes on. Sure, we’re still competing, but we’re also willing to toss one another a bone every now and then.

I guess it comes with the territory, being in a service-based industry. Our goal is ultimately to make sure that IT systems and business resources are operating properly for the businesses that rely on them. Would we all prefer that we were the ones ensuring that a business is productive, that we were the ones with the contract? Of course … but that doesn’t get in the way of the end goal.

What was the single biggest technology or business decision that drove your company’s growth in 2019? How did it do so?

MD: In 2019, we really benefited by focusing on our marketing endeavors. Let’s face it, you could offer the greatest service in the world, but that means nothing if you can’t get the word out about it. Plus, it isn’t as though signing on a client is a lifelong commitment. You must work to keep your company top-of-mind with your clients when they think of IT services.

Really, you don’t want them to think of “IT services.” You want them to think of your company. To accomplish this, you need to make sure that they’re seeing a lot of you.  Marketing is the best way to do that. We’ve really been focused on pushing out content that touches upon real-life, practical challenges and problems that we can help address. And as we’ve done so, we’ve really leaned into search engine optimization. People go to Google for everything, so doing our best to get Google to pay attention to us has really helped.

We’ve also been very proactive in keeping the conversation going with our clients and prospects. Out of sight is out of mind, and in business, out of mind means …