Magazine Article | September 12, 2008

Use Cost Savings To Support Client Relationship

A VAR secures its status as a trusted advisor after replacing a nonprofit’s outdated technology as part of a $96,000 sale.


Business Solutions, October 2008
Written by: Gennifer Biggs
Rapport Between Vendor, Partners Seen In Product

When Success Computer Consulting Director of Sales Brent Morris heard about the new Lenovo ThinkPad SL Series, geared toward SMBs who use 'business' computers for half-work, half-play purposes, he was intrigued. That's because Morris is among the channel partners Lenovo meets with several times a year to garner input straight 'off the street,' and he understands the process behind new product development. "I've been to Raleigh [Lenovo headquarters] and sat in those meetings about what they have coming. And, as a partner, they are ready to listen to our criticisms and take them into consideration," says Morris.

Lenovo not only flies in channel partners, it goes on the road to solicit input on its plans, products, weaknesses, and strengths. "We have reseller meetings where we discuss products in development," explains Pete Schavone, channel marketing manager for Lenovo. "We ask them what they think and ask them to collaborate with us. We ask them questions such as: how would you sell this, what would you need to sell this, what should the price point be, how does it compare with other models?"

The reason? Schavone says it's simple: Lenovo executives don't interact with the end users, its resellers do. "We want to hear from the people in the trenches — in this case, the people who work with our SMB customers." So, when the SL Series was unveiled in July, it reflected that input. The new series provides business tools standard on the Lenovo business-oriented ThinkPad series, such as an active protection system (automatically locks down the disk drive if a dropping motion is detected), integrated fingerprint reader, password management software, rescue and recovery, small business services, and a Vista OS. But, for the SMB owners and employees who use their laptops 24/7 — at home and on the road — the SL Series is lightweight (starting at 5.5 pounds), has an antiglare wide screen (14.1 or 15.4 inches), is Wi-Fi and mobile broadband ready, has GPS options, and offers multimedia options such as Dolby surround sound, integrated camera, and Blu-ray recordable DVD drive. "The resellers we've talked to felt this new ThinkPad has the right features that they could take to their SMB customers," says Schavone. "Our goal was to take the business features from our corporate series and add wireless and multimedia capabilities to serve the SMB audience."

For Morris, who has been involved in Lenovo's channel partner councils, it has been interesting to experience how channel partners play a part in Lenovo product development. "We used to look at our manufacturers and ask them: What can you give me?" says Morris. "But we learned it has to be a two-way street, and so have some manufacturers. We have goals for sales of Lenovo's products, and they involve us when they are working on new products — this helps us both grow our businesses the way we want to."  Morris says while he hasn't been involved in the research behind the SL Series and isn't sure the new ThinkPad is a good fit for Success Computer Consulting's average customer, he looks forward to trying it out. "If Lenovo asks us to put some of the SL Series in our customers' offices to try them out, I will do it without a second thought because I know that whatever it is we hear, they will act on it — good or bad. I know they want to hear all the feedback, and they will follow up."
www.lenovo.com

Brent Morris, director of sales at Success Computer Consulting When help from above wasn't enough to resolve the IT issues at the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the nonprofit turned to Success Computer Consulting, a local VAR that focuses on solutions for SMBs. "We connected with the archdiocese through a referral from another customer, and after a thorough assessment of its entire network, we won the job," explains Brent Morris, director of sales, Success Computer Consulting. Although the initial project was to provide support for the archdiocese, Morris explains that the archdiocese knew it needed more help than that. "The way the relationship started, they needed service for their network; they were overburdened," says Morris. "We immediately realized that a lot of the work we were completing for them was only necessary because their equipment was outdated." While that news came as no surprise to the customer, Morris says the archdiocese needed guidance for the pending equipment refresh. "When we start with a client, we do a two-prong assessment, and that is what we did for the archdiocese. We look at the technical landscape, and we also assess the client's business side, going through about 2 hours of intake questions with the leaders and executives of the organization. Then, we match up their business expectations with technology expectations and try to sync those up before we move forward."

Replace Outdated Equipment To Lessen Demands On IT Staff
Morris says the archdiocese was struggling with outdated equipment — PCs and 30 small servers ranging from four to six years old — that took an excessive amount of IT support. "Our finding was that they were spending time on IT instead of focusing on things that would make their organization better." Because the archdiocese didn't have the budget to completely exchange all its old equipment for new, Success Computer Consulting recommended a phased replacement plan with a certain number of desktop PCs and laptops swapped out each quarter. "We advised them about the value of the Lenovo ThinkCentre A57 desktops and ThinkPad T61 notebooks. We recommended laptops for the field personnel in parishes [about 30% of the staff] and desktops for internal staff."

The key to winning this installation, says Morris, was the faith Success Computer Consulting has in Lenovo's quality. "The second piece was the Lenovo ThinkVantage technology, specifically its one-button recovery option," explains Morris. "Before, if a user had a corrupt system, he lost a day or two of work because he had to go back to IT support, find recovery CDs, and reinstall those programs. With one-button recovery, the user presses the blue button, and that resets the computer to factory defaults or the custom settings established by the user when the equipment was installed."

Morris says that for many small organizations, the real value of durability, one-touch recovery, and strong vendor support comes in terms of savings within IT departments. Success Computer Consulting understands that particular end result since it fills the role of 'IT department' for about 65% of its customers. "When the manufacturer supports us, we know we can call for support, get a live voice, and their only goal is to solve my problem quickly. So, we know when we recommend these products, we eliminate those times where you can't reach a vendor for support, and that time element really can bog down small business IT staffs." Morris says that while he's never seen it in writing, his experience with Lenovo is that if the company receives a product for repair, it returns it the next day with repairs completed.

Once Success Computer Consulting made its equipment recommendations, Morris says the archdiocese did question whether it was paying more for the Lenovo brand, a common objection. "There is a belief that Lenovo and ThinkPads come at a premium price, but we show customers that we are typically within 5% of the competition, and that resolves those questions. We just have to provide information to overcome the perception."

Consider Time, Budget Constraints Of Clients
Once the archdiocese approved the proposal, which cost about $96,000, a 12-month phased replacement plan kicked off. Success Computer Consulting also installed six new IBM BladeCenter HS21 XM servers using virtualization technology to fulfill the storage needs formerly provided by 30 servers. Once the installation was complete, the archdiocese started to see both cost and time savings. "Their support costs and the time their staff spends on support have gone down about 30%, which obviously can be accounted for through new equipment alone, but we expect the drop in support time will continue to be a low cost for them four or five years into this because of the reliability we've seen from Lenovo and IBM products," explains Morris. He adds that the typical payback for an installation of this size is about three years. In the meantime, the next step is twofold. "Because they are a nonprofit that was using older technology, getting them standardized on updated technology was a big deal, and the next challenge is updating them to the Vista OS," says Morris. The new hardware came with Microsoft Vista, but Success Computer Consulting exercised the downgrade rights to XP Pro. "We didn't implement Vista right off because the archdiocese did have some legacy applications to deal with, and they needed the hardware installation on a tighter timeline than what we could meet if we thoroughly evaluated those legacy apps to determine their compatibility with Vista," says Morris. "Long term, once we've done that, then we will also work to establish a refresh cycle so they do not fall so far behind with their technology. In our experience, swapping out 100-plus PCs in one fell swoop doesn't work for us or them. We want to get them set for future phased refreshes."
www.sccnet.com