Customer Success & The vCIO

By Matt Pillar, chief editor

Dataprise, Inc.’s Mick Shah eschews the notion of a customer success officer. Customer success, he says, is everyone’s job, and it starts with the vCIO. Here’s how the 300-employee Rockville, MD-based MSP marries vCIO-as-a-Service to its customer success strategy.

There’s no denying that the trend toward subscription- based services has buoyed the channel— at least, to those tech service providers that were either born into the model or have toughed it through the transition. Recurring payments are predictable. They bring a science to revenue forecasting, which in turn informs budget and financial planning. Predictable revenue forecasts push efficiencies into the far reaches of the business, from inventory planning and accuracy improvements to enhanced labor budgeting and long-range workforce planning. Those systemic organizational improvements free up time and resources for the customer-facing activities that directly hit the bottom line.