Articles by Matt Pillar

  1. Sorensen Named RSPA W2W Leader Of The Year 8/8/2018

    The work my friend and colleague Abby Sorensen put into the IT Channel is paying dividends even after she shifted her focus to the greater software business community. Last week at its RetailNOW event, the Retail Solutions Providers Association’s Women-to-Women (W2W) Committee named her its 2018 Leader Of The Year. Committee Chair and business owner Kelli Stewart, owner/operations manager at Advanced Data Systems, bestowed the honors from the mainstage.

  2. Men: Let's Get Past The Discomfort Of Sexism In IT 7/13/2018

    Men outnumber women in this industry by something on the order of 8 to 2, and the margin is even wider in the c-suite. By and large, we’re the ones approving salaries, greenlighting recruits, and setting the cultural tones of our companies. That requires us to be involved in solving the pay gap, recruiting more women into the field, and most importantly, driving cultures that demand equal respect across gender lines. None of that will happen if we’re not talking about it.

  3. Get Proactive About Client Care 7/2/2018

    The VAR or MSP bears the brunt of customer dissatisfaction with vendor products almost completely. The deal gets even more raw when they swallow expenses associated with warranty and service work. How much confidence do you have in the quality of the vendor products you’re supporting, and how much confidence do those vendors have in you?

  4. Recurring Revenue & Operational Maturity 7/2/2018

    We last featured Chris Rumpf in 2013, back when we were still Business Solutions magazine, his company was still called Rumpf Computer Solutions, and recurring revenue was covering just south of 90 percent of his business’ operating expenses.

  5. Why A Veteran Is Your Next Hire 7/2/2018

    MSSP BLOKWORX’s CEO Robert Boles offers a strong argument for hiring veterans into IT careers. His experience-based opinions are backed by the stats. The blazing hot security services market, in particular, is poised to benefit from veterans' experience.

  6. Client Service Is Not Client Success 5/1/2018

    A VAR or MSP can’t assume that because client satisfaction is in an acceptable range that said clients must be experiencing success. Neither can the VAR or MSP assume that a client’s general success in business can be attributed directly to the products or managed services being delivered. Here's where most of the industry is getting the client success trend all wrong.

  7. How POSRG Supports Sales With Sustainability 5/1/2018

    This POS VAR’s status as one of the only certified facilities dedicated to the recycling and destruction of POS equipment and data is accelerating its perennial double-digit growth.

  8. Customer Success & The vCIO 5/1/2018

    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.

  9. Automation And The Fate Of The IT Professional 4/30/2018

    There’s been no shortage of press about the IT labor situation in India. In case you haven’t been following, here’s a quick summation. The country’s outsourced IT shops are like our brick-and-mortar stores. There are too many of them. They’re occupied by too many employees for the times. They both face threats posed by automation and Amazon, respectively, nemeses whose names are nearly synonymous.

  10. Leaving User Experience To Vendors? Big Mistake. 4/17/2018

    As VAR and MSP sales and marketing organizations catch the buyer persona buzz, are client personas and user experiences being overlooked?