Win Out-Of-State Managed Services Deals
By The Business Solutions Network
This MSP’s banking industry expertise helped it land a $2,500-per-month contract with a bank two states away from its headquarters.
For most VARs and MSPs (managed services providers), winning business deals within a short drive from their headquarters is hard enough, let alone doing so out-of-town. MSP RESULTS Technology, however, is a 25-employee company that is finding that developing vertical market expertise in banking and other highly regulated industries has opened up a whole new world of opportunities. This point was illustrated last year, when RESULTS was contacted by Angelina Savings Bank in Lufkin, TX — more than 600 miles away from its headquarters.
Banking Expertise Leads To Stronger Partnership Opportunities
RESULTS’ banking expertise includes an array of industry certification training, such as SSAE-16 (Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements 16), which is an industry standard that addresses engagements undertaken by service auditors for reporting on controls at service provider companies.
The MSP also has extensive experience in supporting FFIEC (Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council) guidelines, which is a set of banking standards that defines specific security standards and business policy guidelines.
“We used our industry knowledge to create detailed IT policies for banks, covering all the major areas bank auditors look for during their IT audits,” says Mike Gilmore, CTO at RESULTS. “Once we had our documentation formalized, we began pursuing partnerships with complementary firms and found a good fit with a nationwide banking core processing company, Data Center Inc. [DCI]. The company was starting to receive inquiries from bank clients about managing their IT infrastructures, but DCI decided not to provide these services. After meeting with them and reviewing our certifications and policies, we formed a strategic partnership, and that was what led Angelina Savings, one of DCI’s customers, to contact us.”
Free Assessment Key To Winning Managed Services Business
The bank was compelled to look for a new IT provider after its part-time IT person announced his retirement. The bank also knew that it would be audited in the near future by federal banking authorities, and it was imperative that it received a good score.
After confirming the bank’s potential fit as a client, the MSP flew a sales rep and engineer to meet with the bank’s manager to start the sales process. “The way we begin any new engagement is by using a combination of assessment tools and conducting interviews with key stakeholders in the organization,” says Gilmore. “For the assessment, we use RapidFire Tools’ Network Detective suite, including their Network Assessment Module, Exchange Assessment Module, and Security Assessment Module. While these tools are gathering information on the prospect’s network, we’ll begin the interview, then circle back to the tools once all scanning is completed. The reports contain a lot of useful raw data, including the number of users and devices on their network, number of email accounts, number of servers behind their firewall, how much data needs backed up, and the status of patch updates. The process typically takes 1.5 hours on site, another 1.5 hours to analyze the data, then a follow-up appointment to discuss the findings and to present the client with a proposal. The report showed several areas where the bank needed to make improvements, including its password controls, Active Directory settings, software updates, and policy controls.”
RESULTS recommended a full managed service offering, which included replacing the bank’s firewalls with Dell SonicWALL, antivirus with Webroot, backup and disaster recovery (BDR) software with Datto local backup and Intronis cloud backup, and migrating its email to a hosted Exchange environment. The MSP also uses a remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool from LabTech, a ticketing/support tool from ConnectWise, and IBM MaaS360 EMM (Enterprise Mobility Management) for its clients’ mobile management needs. “The bank had no reservations about the cost of our solution, which came to $2,500 per month, but they did have concerns about our ability to respond to an IT emergency in a timely manner. We overcame this objection by showing them a local IT firm we work with through Ingram Micro’s partner network, and then we were able to close the deal."
The initial installation took two days to complete, and RESULTS was able to finish the implementation remotely, including migrating the bank’s email to a hosted Exchange environment and pushing out monitoring and antivirus agents to each user. “One thing that really shortened the sales cycle for this project was our ability to provide the bank with a prewritten security policy that they just had to put their name on,” says Gilmore.
“When you add up the value of our managed services offering and compare it to the cost of hiring a full-time IT person, there is no comparison. Not only do customers get access to a whole team of IT experts, our banking expertise creates even more value.”