Cost, Ease, Security: The Three Desires of Technology Strategy

Speaker 1:

Welcome to The JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience.

Christina:

Today’s episode is Cost, Ease, Security: The Three Desires of Technology Strategy. A few things I will talk about are strategy. It’s not just about the technology, it’s about how the technology is implemented. We talk a lot about small steps. It is a strategy to work on knocking out the small things. Investments. So this doesn’t just mean money. It can also mean your time. You can invest in your business by having the right meetings with the right people. And last, partnerships, because you don’t know what you don’t know. Your technology partner should help you make decisions that will help you innovate. All right, let’s get started.

Todd:

Welcome, everybody, to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology Experience. We are here with [Dinesh 00:00:56], and I didn’t even… [Pernhauser 00:00:58], is that how you say your last name?

Dinesh:

Yeah [inaudible 00:01:02].

Todd:

And we have a great discussion today about something that’s on a lot of peoples minds. We are at the end of the year where a lot of companies are performing their planning for 2021, for the next year, and there’s a lot going on in the world. There’s a lot of uncertainty. There’s a lot of chaos. There’s a lot of confusion about what is the best steps forward. And on the top of peoples minds is this idea of we got to keep our cost down, make sure we’re not spending too much depending on where the market goes and where things go with our industry. On the same token, you have security that is increasingly getting more dangerous for businesses.

Todd:

And with the threat of security ruining a reputation or the ability of a company to operate, that is another thing that is pulling at that strategy of what we need to do, or what a company needs to do. And then the third thing is the customer or their employee experience, making sure that their employees are happy, making sure that morale is high, making sure that there’s good connectedness in the organization, that people can work in this distributed workforce.

Todd:

And so, as you’re sitting down, and I’m sure many people have already done so, is determining your strategy, it’s really important to consider these three things and to put at the center of them, technology because technology is really the strategy to put things froward. So Dinesh, you have a lot of experience with technology strategy and helping organizations to understand strategy and how security and cost fit into the equation, so to speak. What are some of the things that you are seeing that need to be top of mind for business owners right now?

Dinesh:

So, thanks, Todd. And that’s really timely conversation because I think what happened this year was it’s a forced digital transformation. So basically what happened around March, everybody went home and basically what you guys did and what everybody was kind of be able to do, Zooming, Teams, collaboration, these thing has to be adopted in weeks. And we are just basically working on the aftermath of this whole digital transformation which everybody has gone through. My wife has gone through digital transformation because kids are learning now at home, right? How about security? How about content? How about how much time do you spend on Netflix for example? This is digital transformation.

Dinesh:

So each and every organization has to deal with what’s coming next, how to make sure that’s going to be persistent, how they are going to make sure that security is not just creating the doors for the home but actually teach people to lock the door, not just leave it open. So I think it’s more… I feel, based on the different strategies I have seen, it’s less focused on new technologies and get new technologies, but more culture, more usage, more education, more adoption, more processes. So it’s unfortunately, the weight is more on the organization part, not on the service provider part. It’s more on the executives rather than the IT people. So that’s what I feel and that’s how we see things moving forward. And what you said like security cost and the productivity partner is let’s say, that’s really the key components for moving forward.

Todd:

Yeah. I think that’s pretty interesting. The idea that technology for the sake of technology isn’t a strategy. Just throwing in technology because you think that is going to help you to be successful is not. It’s all about how technology is implemented and how technology is used at the organization. We’ve talked about this concept where you’re the answer to security, the answer to better productivity or better connectivity in an organization. Reduced costs may not be more technology but better use of that technology, and that’s why it’s so important to have in an organization, a partner that can help with that and make sure that you’re utilizing technology.

Todd:

And while sure, there may be other systems. At JMARK, we had many different systems that we use for collaboration while we were in the office, but that just translated to being a perfect solution for when we were out of the office. And there might be system software that companies use or used when they were in the office that don’t fit anymore. So sometimes it’s not necessarily about new technology, but might be about changing the technology so it’s a one for one. And so we have to get out of this mindset that it’s just more technology, that’s more money being… Ching, ching, ching, ching. It’s really about making technology improve your security and improve your productivity, and while you’re doing that, you’re improving your costs.

Dinesh:

And I give an example here, Todd. You might have seen this meme on the internet when what was leading digital transformation 2020? The CIO? The CEO? COVID-19. And this is the problem. Obviously COVID was leading the digital transformation, not the IT departments, not the executives. So we basically as a community, we just suffer this reactive mode. So if you see, we have created a poll. We are servicing IT service providers, so we see what’s between the clients and the service providers as well. So we polled the service providers, where you see the most breakdown with your communication with your clients. And most of the people said it’s cybersecurity and executive engagement.

Dinesh:

So first, I would like to challenge you, Todd, and the others here, what do we mean strategy, if most of the service providers cannot have a common understanding of what is important for business? Not what more gadget to sell, but what type of processes need to improve, how we can help the industry, how can help them to run their business? Like the restaurant who needs to have a curbside pick up and change their business model from Monday to Tuesday, how we as a community can help, that’s strategy. Do we have the requirements? Do we have the conversation? Do we have the executives involved to these conversations? So I’m trying to challenge you guys like how do you see that?

Dex:

Yeah. I think that’s a really good point. I think that’s where the MSPs that are really helping their clients are becoming partners to their clients and offering these services where they are having those conversations that you talked about, where it’s not just like, “Oh, we have this technology to sell you. We have these new solutions,” but, “Let’s learn about your business. Let’s learn about your business in your industry in your market and the way you work, and find the solutions so that we can recommend these solutions that work for you and that you’re going to be able to build into a strategy.” And I think that’s the… I mean, again, that’s the word we’re talking about. I think the keyword here today is strategy. All of these things feed into that if you’re having the right conversations.

Dinesh:

Yeah. The thing is the following. A managed service provider is not a service provider for a client. They are basically a virtual department of that organization. It’s not just a transactional. That’s a transformational relationship. So if a managed service provider has problem to actually engage an executive, that means I’m running… Let’s say, in a [inaudible 00:10:07] organization, I’m running the warehouse and the executives not meeting with me, I don’t know what they want. I don’t know where the purchase order is coming. I don’t know what they are looking for. I cannot run this department and this is obvious. However, for an executive perspective, not having a meeting or strategy with a so-called service provider is a totally normal thing. So running IT departments without any direction is a best practice today. Now, what is the complication if you are running a complete IT operation with a budget, cybersecurity? Everything is running on that infrastructure, and executives are not even engaged with the conversation.

Todd:

I think that’s a great point. And there’s multiple levels of technology strategy, and a lot of IT companies, they act as this virtual IT department and they act as essentially a, what would be called, a CTO. They’re running the technology for the organization. They’re not like a CIO and coming in and looking at the processes, looking at the objectives of the organization, the growth of the organization, and then adapting the strategies and the tactics that are needed to help them be successful. What you were saying goes into this idea that a lot of companies just don’t put technology not even first, but even on the list of possible solutions when they’re trying to solve a problem.

Todd:

And that’s the difference with JMARK is when we have a problem, the very first thing is how can we fix this with technology, whether it’s a software or whether it’s a configuration or something, and then we move onto other pieces of the organization to look for a solution. And that’s why when COVID hit and the digital transformation happened like that, JMARK was like, “Hold my drink. We’re good.” Everybody goes home and everything’s fine. And so that’s what I think a lot of the executives need to recognize that they’re not all-knowing. They’re not all-powerful. They’re not all-understanding. Technology can play a part to fix a lot of the problems that they’re really struggling with, whether that’s growth, whether that’s cost savings, whether that’s innovation, customer experience, whatever it is.

Dex:

I think, Todd, one of the things is that this isn’t a lecture for anybody out there that’s not doing this because part of the problem is this is what we’re trained to do is educate business leaders that technology can help solve these problems and can be, not even can, should be a vital part of their strategy because many business owners don’t know this. For decades, technology was nothing more than a tool that you used to solve a very particular problem. If you haven’t learned that and haven’t been exposed to these ideas that technology can help drive your strategy and should and you should expect and plan on that being the way things work moving forward, then if you haven’t learned those things, you can’t be expected to figure out the strategies. And that’s where your MSP should be a partner and come in to help you do that.

Dinesh:

That’s interesting you’re saying because if you think about any strategy, any type of strategy within the organization should basically cover three things, how we increase the top line, how we increase the bottom line, and how we reduce risk of the business, right? So if you think about the content of any IT strategy is first how we mitigate the risk, how we can create an infrastructure which is secure enough? That’s one thing. The second thing how to make sure the culture of the organization is where use cybersecurity and be productive with cybersecurity because don’t get me wrong, cybersecurity adoption is just a productivity problem.

Dinesh:

Oh, I have a multi-factor authentication and I have to log into this tool. Oh, that’s going to be five more second. I’m going to skip that. So the rejection of cybersecurity best practices are typically being unproductive, right? So it’s really visible UI, another tool, another tool, things like that, right? But the optic on the productivity piece like if a managed service provider or an IT related executive don’t understand what is the bottleneck for that very organization, what is the broken process, where the executives have the most headache, which is the biggest Excel sheet where they try to fix 15 different things, right? If we don’t understand that part, we cannot really give them any advice and the strategy is going to be just kind of have a two, three hour conversation. Set something to the budget, but it doesn’t fulfill the purpose of that, how to help the organization.

Dinesh:

So the second part of this content, or the third part is the content is the top line, is like if you just make your sales people productive, they can make more sales calls. If you’re able to make these sales… If you give more information to those sales people, they know better their clients. These are not buzzwords. You can go to LinkedIn, research to your organizations, and you can learn more and you ask more intelligent questions. These are technology solutions for everything what you guys doing out there. Everybody is now a technology deep company. 10 years ago, the technology was that okay, give me more desktop. Give me more laptops. That’s it.

Dinesh:

But right now, everything, every business decision leads to some sort of system process automation tool, device, system network, something. And that’s what I’m trying to say is that your company strategy is the technology strategy. It’s not a separate thing. And that’s try to challenge the end customers is that think about that maybe, because other than that, that’s what’s happening. It’s not a decision. Digital transformation is going on. Whether you are driven by it or you drive it, that’s the big question. It’s a reaction or you are proactively working on that. And whoever is more proactive is going to just slowly but surely go ahead of the competition and get better people. People like to work better. They do more in less time. They communicate better, have better client experience, whatever it is. It’s just crucial.

Todd:

I think, I mean, everything you said is exactly what we’ve been talking about for months and months and months. But I think that right there though is where a lot of companies are challenged. They recognize that they have to digitally transform their organizations because their customers aren’t in the same place they were before, so they have to go meet their customers where they are and that requires innovation and changes. Well, that innovation is almost always driven by technology. And so, you have to embrace technology but at the same time, you know you have to embrace more technology or different technology to meet your customers where they are and to adapt to digital transformation or whatever it might be, but at the same time, you have to secure yourself. You have to mitigate risks.

Todd:

So it’s not always a first do this and then do this. There’s a balance there because if you don’t have any customers, it doesn’t matter how secure your organization is because you’re not going to be in business anyways. But at the same point, if you innovate and you’re providing a good service and you have a security issue, then you’re going to… Then of course, security is important. So there’s this balance, this give and take, and that’s what security is all about. I mean, it’s a multi-layered approach where you do what you can, you do as much as you can, and you keep knocking it out. I mean, security is changing every single day. You can’t just implement a solution and go, “Okay, whew. We’ve checked that box off. We’re done.” It’s changing all the time.

Todd:

I mean, we have a running list of vulnerabilities that we have to solve and problems we have to fix and it will never end because as soon as we get 100 done, 100 more appear on the end. And so that’s why I argue that, sure, if you don’t have basic security, you have to do some things to get your security in order, but you really have to drive the innovation in the company, drive the innovation so that you are meeting your customers where they are so that you can move into 2021 with a successful organization that is providing great services. And so it’s definitely a give and pull.

Dinesh:

Todd, that’s a really good point. We released our NIST assessment which is a cybersecurity framework assessment not long time ago. And what we realized that most of the organizations think cybersecurity solution as a project which has a beginning and it has the end. And what was your point is exactly what we found too. It’s not. It’s an ongoing development process. That’s a process. Never ends. So what that means is that obviously, you have your different priorities, immediate actions, fix this, fix that, and how you enroll more and more layers of this security later on. Because other than that, you can’t really create the culture of cybersecurity. Create awareness, create this and that projects is going to help, but if you don’t have an overarching strategy, it’s just random things which is not going to help in a longer sense.

Dinesh:

So I feel the same thing on the how end clients are feeling the cost. Now think about how much pressure everybody has. Do I invest? A lot of monthly expenses. I pay so much for different softwares, whether people are using that or not using, whether they adopt it or not adopt it. Or we can have five more tools, but people can’t comprehend with that much change in the organization, so what to do? And many organization doesn’t have a simple application strategy, like what type of processes we’re going to put into an application over the year? What’s happening? What’s the most pain? Just implement [inaudible 00:22:10] for marketing. Implement this CRM. Implement this, this, this, this, that. And nothing get adopted. And they are paying for these fees and the software companies are frustrated because they didn’t adopt the tools. They are paying for something they don’t use.

Dinesh:

And these are excess money, so if you just put thing… Like doing less as a strategy is probably more. Less application but application which is moving the needle and make sure people are adopting that. Create the culture. So if you see the cost part of the strategy, make sure that the strategy addresses the monthly fees, the OPEX part, and also what’s needed more implementation, more project work. And may times, what we feel is that clients are not taking consideration on their internal costs because it’s not coming as an invoice. You have Joe. Joe is working every day. Joe working a little bit more or Joe is working in this project. They don’t feel it’s an extra cost. They are seeing the service providers invoices, the software invoices because they are paying for that.

Dinesh:

So we usually suggest that any project they put inside the strategy, they address the internal resource needed because they off take that. You can give it to the service provider, something like that, but as a cost, part of the three-legged stool for the strategy, it’s really important to divide the OPEX and the CAPEX, and put their internal resources as there. So I’m not sure how you guys are addressing that, but I feel it really, really gives visibility for the executives how to make these decisions because it’s not always obvious.

Todd:

I think that’s a great example of using technology without increasing expense because there is… Every organization that I’ve seen, once you hit a certain size, even at smaller sizes, you run into this issue of app sprawl. Everybody’s trying to do their job the best they can. They’re trying to find the tools to do their job and they implement and adopt tools within departments, within teams of the organization, and that makes it so there’s no unified approach to whatever the thing is, whether it’s project management, whether it’s communication, collaboration. And so by looking at your technology landscape, and going, “Well, wait a minute. Why do we have five applications for chat? Why do we have three different applications for project management? Why do we have all of these different things?”

Todd:

Cutting down on those things and focusing and utilizing them to the full breadth of the software can be so beneficial to your strategy and reduce your cost and allow you to put more investment into your innovation without having to just pull more money out of the bank. And it’s amazing that… I mean, we see this all the time and we’ve experienced it at JMARK. And you’re going to have people who love their software. They love this chat application or they love this thing that does that. But an executive just has to draw the line somewhere and say, “This is our chat application. This is our project management application. Look at the pros and cons and start using it.” And that right there is an awesome strategy for helping your organization be more successful.

Christina:

Something else we’ve talked about too before when it comes to just a business struggling to innovate is it’s possible that they’re just too close to the situation. So that’s where someone like JMARK coming in can be a huge benefit because we work with multiple industries so we can pull from those different industries to help you, and we can see the bigger picture that you might not be able to see.

Dinesh:

Christina, and what I feel about that is that we are talking about the end result. We are talking about the cybersecurity plan. We are talking about the productivity plan. We are talking about a strategy which is kind of a way and how to say, a conceptual thing. But actually, this is not about the end document. It’s about the process. Because who is going to create a strategy? It’s not the service [inaudible 00:26:51]. It’s not JMARK is creating a strategy. JMARK is actually facilitating their efforts to have an alignment within the executives, the users, the middle management layer where we are heading. And that’s documented by JMARK and facilitated by JMARK because that’s the question. You cannot give anybody a strategy.

Dinesh:

We saw IT companies are creating strategies for clients which is going to go to the shelf and nobody’s going to use that because it’s not their strategy. And I think that’s the hardest part for you guys is to actually put a lot of time behind developing a strategy which is not really visible. Give you an example. How you guys going through what’s the process for the strategy development is a kickoff meeting with executives, going there. And they don’t even understand why you’re asking these weird questions. And then, you open up a group session where you are asking intriguing questions so you facilitate their conversation. You sit down with one-on-one meetings, stakeholder interviews. You give them version one, version two, version three. It’s enormous amount of work.

Dinesh:

But what’s coming is an alignment with the organization. And my feeling is many times what I see, IT service providers are doing that, is that these processes are not that valued, like, “Ah, another meeting. I don’t have time. I have sales calls to make and whatever.” They don’t really see that actually, after that, decisions are easy. People are onboard. They know what to do. They put the time. They are motivated, and that’s the result. That’s leadership. That’s what they get from you guys, and they don’t really take it as a consideration because they just take it as granted, right?

Todd:

Well, that goes into investment. A lot of people look at investment and think that means money. Sometimes investment is time. And investment in time can be having meetings with the right people to produce the right outcomes. And when you do that right and accept that other people might have more knowledge and surround yourself with people that have knowledge, you can create wonderful outcomes. And I think that’s just… Especially right now. There’s so much going on. People are thinking about the holidays. They’re thinking about their employees. They’re thinking about the fact that they can’t get together with their family or can’t get together with their employees for a company party or something, and there’s a lot just weighing down on them.

Todd:

And it’s easy to get in that mode of like, “Let’s just wait a month and see what happens. Let’s just wait after the holidays and we’ll get something figured out.” And it’s like, “Oh, I’m burned out.” It’s easy to say like, “Don’t do that,” but now is more important because you touched on it earlier in that if you don’t start innovating and you don’t start securing yourself and you don’t start making the experience better for your employees, your competitors are going to pass you. You’re not going to meet your customers where they need to be, and your employees are going to leave and go somewhere else. And it’s true that everybody’s dealing with a lot, but it’s also true that there is a ton of opportunity out there.

Dinesh:

Give you a good example, Todd. If you watch these drag racing kind of things, you see a super basic Tesla is out competing a Porsche. And these German guys are just like, “What happened?” They don’t even understand what actually happened. So many times when you have small increments, all of a sudden, you have so much improvement that others just don’t understand actually what happened because it wasn’t one thing. It was 55 thing because internal, we communicate better. We can do remote work better. We’re secure. We use multifactor. We are using many tools. We are aligned. We have weekly meetings because we have a culture for that [inaudible 00:31:27]. And bang. That adds up and the competition just seeing, why our clients are leaving?

Dinesh:

And this is small increments, just one day, another day, another day. It’s not a big thing. It’s not like a big bang approach that we’re going to change the company. No. It’s small, the day-in, day-out work and innovation in a small scale, 1% at a time. And I think that’s where hard working executives kind of get buried is that, “Okay, what is the big thing?” No. There is no big thing.

Todd:

That’s exactly. I agree.

Dex:

And I think it’s important to note that that’s… You can hear that and say, “Well, I don’t have time to learn 700 tiny steps either.” But that’s where your MSP comes in. At JMARK, we are constantly… We have people who their entire job is to stay on top of these things so that the rest of the company is informed as the changes are made because technology is such a huge thing that no one person, no one executive, your IT guy, your internal IT guy can know everything. And so your MSP is going to have somebody whose learning all of this small increments in security. Somebody else is learning all the small changes in regulations, and bringing these things to you to help you form your strategy.

Dinesh:

That’s because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t even call the support like, “Hey. I would like to have a better communication with internally.” No. You’re like, “I’m frustrated with Slack or Teams. Nothing gets done. I have 1,500 emails a day. I just want to go home and cut everything with technology because now I can’t think.” That’s the problem. You don’t even know that technology how overwhelming with people. Just send an email. So easy, right? Hey, pass this. Pass that. I go, “What’s the priority?” People go crazy, right?

Dinesh:

And that’s what a little increment, like actually just implement an inbox zero for example, within an organization that makes sure that you can actually clean out your inbox. So put it in a task or something. It gives you and everybody… You go home or you stop… and you are not… You don’t have this anxiety like what I’m missing or something like that. Other simple thing is blocking out time, like, “Okay, guys. We are not messaging every Thursday morning. Everybody in Thursday morning, we work on the weekly plan, whatever it is.” Give different type of cushion with people. These are best practices if you don’t adopt as an individual or an organization, you just can’t. You just spinning your wheels and not going anywhere. It’s just crazy to see how…

Dinesh:

And what Todd was saying. That’s not another $1,500 investment. No. It’s just simple, best practices. Implement, learn and repeat. That’s it. It’s not another big system. It’s not implementing SAP or that’s going to save us. No. It’s everyday life, how to make things easier, make decisions quicker, get more information, better information, things like that. So it’s just the small, small, small stuff.

Todd:

Yeah. When I look back at JMARK over the years and the quarterly planning that we’ve done, I mean… And we don’t do them exactly by quarter but essentially, these period plans that break up the year. I mean, sometimes you come out of these meetings and you see all of these to-dos and all of these projects across multiple departments and it’s so easy to look at it and just go, “This is crazy. There’s so much going on.” But what you have to look at through the lens of the long-term scope of it is that these are all just pieces in many, many different areas that are playing a part in creating and moving the company forward because I can look back at these projects and think, “Oh, this project has been going on for a year and a half,” but that’s okay as long as it’s progressing and you’re moving forward, whereas somebody else will be like, “Okay, we can’t start that project this quarter or this year because we just don’t have time for that.” But you got to make those small increments like you were saying and that’s key to what we’re talking about. I mean, we’re talking about strategy. It doesn’t have to be these big, old massive things. It’s about taking these small steps sometimes, and sometimes that is technology. Sometimes it’s process [inaudible 00:36:31].

Dinesh:

And it’s interesting what you’re saying. Strategy in that sense for a 15, 20 people little organization trying to get better every day, it’s conversations within the organization, conversation between the CEO or the owner of the company with the couple of people, like, “Okay. In this year, what we going to fix? What we going to fix in this quarter? And I understand everything is important, but let’s fix one thing,” and that’s going to be yielding the compounding interest on… Three years from now, the competition is saying like, “Holy smokes. Why these guys are so good? I just don’t understand.” But small details get… And that can be a strategy. It’s a strategy to do the little things.

Dinesh:

Because what’s happening now, and everybody’s in this whether we have a lockdown or not, another one. It’s total uncertainty. Why we are not just fixing everything what’s needed anyhow? That’s our strategy is to make sure everything on the baseline is good. We have processes. We automate as much as possible, write down these processes, make sure everybody is like… because that’s it. And if you are coming out any type of industry after this crisis, you better off than when you get into. And if that’s the strategy only, that’s it. That’s enough. You don’t have to change the world and everything like that. So going back to this three-legged stool, like the security component. Again, I think it’s super important to make sure that the services, the security components are there from the service provider…

Dex:

Oh, did we lose Dinesh?

Todd:

I think so.

Dex:

Might have.

Todd:

Okay-

Dex:

Now-

Todd:

Oh, go ahead, Dex.

Dex:

Oh, I was just going to add that as we were talking about these strategies and about whatever small increments you can make, you don’t have to figure these out on your own. When you’re weighing priorities, your MSP again can come help you weigh those out and say, “Yeah, among equals, we can do this first and we can do this easiest,” or, “No. And as a matter of fact, these are not equals. This thing is a… There’s a hole in your security right here. This has to be done first.” And so, I think that that’s… We’ve talked about the way that you can kind of freeze up not knowing where to start, and you don’t have to know. Again, it comes back to what was said about now knowing what you don’t know. If you don’t know, your technology provider should be that partner to help you understand and see the big picture and make those decisions because they have the knowledge to help you do that.

Todd:

Yeah. I have mentioned this before and I’m sure you’ve seen this, Dinesh, I see so many… I’m a part of so many different groups online on Facebook and other places, and I see so many IT companies and executives that just don’t get it. And they’re focusing on the technology and focusing not on the actual problem that companies need. And what you say, Dex, is so true because there’s so many variables. There’s so many variables in business now. And you have to bring in people. And it’s not just necessarily an IT provider like JMARK or whoever. It’s about bringing in people that know your industry, that know the strategy, know the trends and putting that into play. And one of the things that’s great about JMARK is that we have dedicated teams that really focus on different industries and we can take that knowledge and experience and apply them to other industries. And so a lot of times, there’s concepts and strategies and ideas that come up because we saw somebody else do it, and those are the kind of things that bring it forward.

Dinesh:

Todd, I think it’s simple to understand why your competition and the IT industry in general answering this question fairly simply. Tell me what to do and I’m doing that. Tell me what application it, and I’m providing that. Why? Todd, this is easy. This is type job. I can learn and I fix it. I have a Microsoft certification and I can fix it. That’s easy. The hard part is the leadership.

Todd:

Right.

Dinesh:

Hard part is to make a decision. Confront with the client without basically confronting that they need to help you to make decision, not deferring the decision, and getting this hard calls, that’s leadership and that’s missing. And can you put a price tag on leadership? Can you say this is my leadership service for $1,500 per month? No. You can’t. Can you put a checklist like I’m a leader if I’m do this and that. No. You just a leader or you are not. And give you an example, if you are hiring a sales person or a sales leader, what’s the difference? You tell the guy, “Call 15, 30 client or prospect and this is a list, and I expect you to do that,” or, “Come up with a strategy how to fix it and give me new leads and new clients.” That’s the difference between a sales leader and a sales person.

Dinesh:

And that’s what the industry doesn’t have is that there are many IT people there, but many or few IT leaders. And how much investment you need to make as JMARK to nurture these leaders, nurture and as your community to give back to your clients this amount of management and leadership which is so intangible. It’s a huge amount of investment for your organization with a bet that it’s going to help your clients in the long run and your clients are going to appreciate that. But you don’t get more than appreciation because you are not putting an extra price tag on that. You’re absorbing as a cost in your organization to give a superior experience to your clients and for them to get and beat their competition.

Dinesh:

And I think when leaders understand like, “Holy smokes, I have these guys and I just want to unlock with meeting more and ask more of their opinion.” They are unlocking a potential within their organization they already have, but engaging more. But sometimes they get apathy. Oh, we tried this. It didn’t work. I sent to the IT guys and they sent me an invoice for something I don’t understand. The bar is so low, even exceeding that is like, “Wow, really? Is it possible?” So I see that end clients really put the bar down like, “Okay. Just fix my stuff.” And they don’t even try to touch anything else. So it’s crazy.

Todd:

Yeah. And I think it goes into what we started out talking about. There’s a give and take. We started talking about cost, ease and security, and there’s a give and take between those three things when you’re coming up with strategy, and there’s also a give and take between your organizational leadership and the leadership of whoever’s running IT. And both parties have to come together as leaders and help each other to be successful and to move their organizations to new levels of success. So I think we’ve had a great discussion. We’ll finish it with Christina and her round up. Take it away.

Christina:

Okay. So this is what I came up with today. First of course, a strategy which we talked a lot about, and we mentioned technology for the sake of technology is not a strategy. It’s all about how the technology is implemented and your strategy in this current chaotic environment is going to determine your future success. So then I have small steps. We talked a lot about that too. So it is a strategy to work on knocking out the small things. It’s okay if you’ve been working on a project for over a year as long as you’re making progress on it. So then I have investments which we talked about. That does not always mean money. Sometimes that can mean your time. So sometimes investing means having the meetings with the right people to create the outcomes that you want. And then last, I put partnerships because you don’t know what you don’t know and your tech partner should be the one to helping you make these decisions to create a strategy to innovate your company.

Todd:

Absolutely. Awesome conversation. Everybody have wonderful holidays. Bye-bye.

Dex:

Thanks.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and helped convey that at JMARK, we are people first and technology second. To learn more and discover additional content relevant to your business, please visit us online at JMARK.com or at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. You may also call us at 844-44-JMARK. Thank you for your time and we look forward to seeing you again.