Abby Sorensen

ARTICLES BY ABBY SORENSEN

• How AIDC VAR Redline Won Produce

  This AIDC reseller has always been a step ahead of channel trends like developing proprietary software, building recurring revenue, and capitalizing on regulatory opportunities within a niche vertical.

• What VARs & MSPs Can Learn From The Trump Campaign’s IT Provider

  The Wall Street Journal’s homepage on January 17 featured a headline that included the words “IT Firm.” VARs and MSPs take note: a fellow solutions provider is caught up in a nasty, politically-charged debate being litigated on a national scale. Obviously, your clients are not paying you in large sums of cash handed over in plastic Wal-Mart bags. This story is preposterous in so many ways, and it’s far outside the realm of what’s normal for how VARs and MSPs operate. As absurd as the entire situation might be, this story does raise a few legitimate questions about IT service provider business models that are worth rehashing.

• Retail Resellers: Build Your Business Around Hardware, Not On It

  Instead of lamenting over shrinking hardware margins, Technology Recovery Group (TRG) continues to diversify with unique offerings that keep its tier-one retail clients coming back for more.

• Retail Resellers: Build Your Business Around Hardware, Not On It

  Instead of lamenting over shrinking hardware margins, Technology Recovery Group (TRG) continues to diversify with unique offerings that keep its tier-one retail clients coming back for more.

• How An MSP Survived The Loss Of A Huge Account

  In February 2017, CIO Solutions lost a big account. So big, in fact, that it accounted for 40 percent of the MSP’s revenue. This isn’t a mom and pop shop IT Services provider we’re talking about – the account’s revenue brought in millions of dollars annually. Fast forward to September 2018, and CIO Solutions is gracing the cover of Channel Executive magazine. The company not only rebounded – it completed a successful acquisition and is in a strong position for future growth. We couldn’t fit this side story in the magazine, so instead we’re sharing the lessons learned from loss of a large customer in a web-exclusive feature.

• MSP M&A: People First, Technology Second

  In February 2017 California-based MSPs CIO Solutions and TekTegrity were each at a crossroads. Eric Egolf, president and CEO of CIO Solutions, had just seen 40 percent of the company’s revenue walk out the door with the loss of a single client. Russ Levanway, CEO of TekTegrity, was trying to regain the steady growth the company had earned in past years and was facing an imminent need to build a more mature cloud platform to compete in a changing landscape.

• Let’s Talk About The Channel’s Lack Of Diversity

  The lack of women and minorities in the channel is such a complex problem. We can’t keep forgetting about diversifying the channel – it has to be an ongoing conversation about how our industry can find better ways to recruit talented women and minorities and help them advance to leadership positions.

• How Firing Clients Spurs Growth

  Mythos Technology is still projecting double-digit growth in 2018 despite its initiative to trim off the lowest-performing part of its customer base.

• VARs & MSPs: Just Say ‘No’ To Bad Customers

  When James Laszko founded Mythos Technology in 2010 he likely didn’t expect he’d be able to afford to fire the lowest performing 20 percent of his customers in 2018. But that’s exactly what he has set out to do this year. You can read more about his customer rightsizing initiative in the May 2018 issue of Channel Executive magazine. In the meantime, there is another side to the Mythos story: how to find the customers who are the right fit so they won’t end up on the chopping block a few years down the road.

• The Fresh Face Of The POS Channel

  How a POS solutions provider and software developer backed by cofounders in their early 30s is thriving with triple-digit growth thanks to a recurring revenue obsession and a smartly diversified business portfolio.