Brian Sherman Posts

There are endless ways to work tablets, smartphones and similar technologies into your portfolio, but their real value comes from how you implement them in your clients’ workplaces. Check out the mobility solutions offered up at this month’s Super Mobility Week and read how MSPs are using smartphone and tablet technologies to complement traditional PCs.

Onboarding a new client is the perfect opportunity to both set and manage expectations while nurturing and developing your professional relationship early on. From a welcome gift to salient points about necessary hardware upgrades, give your new clients what they need to trust you and your services.

From Fortune 500 companies to mom-and-pop stores, every organization needs solid IT security specialists who can audit current systems and policies, recommend and implement proper upgrades, and monitor and support it all. Explore our related security resources — including a trustmark, executive certificate and quick start guide — and make sure your solution providing organization is up to the task.

Solution providers who want to get the most value from their alliances delegate partner responsibilities to their most capable employees: trustworthy and creative individuals who understand what customers need. Finding someone who can uncover and comprehend the objectives and concerns of their colleagues can be tricky business. It takes someone with good listening skills, problem-solving capabilities and flexibility.

The value of a sales playbook — the comprehensive action plan designed to help build a better dialogue with customers — is proportional to the effort you put into it. Use this article to tackle the five key points you should first address when you’re developing a new sales playbook, from the plays to the equipment to the position to the team.

The Federal Communications Commission’s new Open Internet Initiative focuses on three basic principles: transparency, blocking and unreasonable discrimination. While the proposal seems to be a watered-down version of the rules overturned earlier this year by the United States Court of Appeals, ISPs need to start thinking about investing in infrastructure to enhance services for their largest customers.

Collaboration shouldn’t be just another buzzword in the channel vernacular. When providers actively engage with other value-added resellers, managed service providers, vendors, distribution partners or other industry professionals, their efforts can result in far more sustainable outcomes than if they were to operate on their own. From extending creativity and working capacity to providing a more comprehensive system of checks and balances, cooperative efforts can clearly produce meaningful results.

In today’s fast-paced and fiscally cautious business environment, it takes a flexible and proactive IT services organization to meet the needs — and demands — of commercial clients. Are you ready, willing and able to succeed when opportunities appear, even those that require significant and swift operational changes?

The portfolio prospects for solution providers have never been brighter, from advanced cloud solutions to the Internet of Things. But with so much effort required to transform an IT business — and the considerable time and fine-tuning it takes to prepare a new VAR offering for a full-scale rollout — providers, vendors and distribution executives should be investing time and attention into their future products and services.

If you manage or work in an IT company, you are fully aware of the industry’s shortage of skilled professionals — and with the explosive growth of the technology field, the skills shortage will not go away without your help. From educating high school guidance counselors to sponsoring internships to joining CompTIA’s AWIT Community, there are plenty of ways you can get involved with filling the skills gap that affects us all.