Making Technology Changes Painless, So You Can Get Rockin’ with Solutions to Make Your Organization Successful and Your Employees Equipped to Rock Your World

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the JMARK Business Innovation Technology experience.

Todd:

Okay. So welcome everybody that is watching or listening. We’re excited to join once again. This time we have Garry Adams, who is one of our customer relationship managers at JMARK. And I think we have a pretty interesting topic today that a lot of people will be interested in.

Todd:

And I got to read this because it’s so good. Making technology changes painless so you can get rockin’ with solutions to make your organizations successful and your employees equipped to rock your world. So pretty good topic.

Todd:

So to start this off, the idea for this topic came because everybody hates changes. Everybody fears change. Nobody likes pain, at least I don’t know that anybody likes pain. There may be so masochists out there that do, but we don’t like pain. And so the idea that a lot of businesses have is that they may be going through this struggle of technology isn’t working or maybe they’re not moving in the right direction. They know they need to make some change, but there’s so much going on. There’s so many initiatives happening. There’s so many projects happening. There’s meetings all the time. I don’t have time to change IT providers or change my IT strategy, and essentially that idea of I don’t have time is saying that the pain to prioritize that change is too much; I don’t want to deal with it.

Todd:

And that is what we need to talk about today, because the reality is that MSP or organizations that are leading the technology strategy for companies and helping to make this change should be doing it in a way that is not painful. There may be a little bit of discomfort, but it’s not painful and you’re moving in a direction that will help your organization be successful.

Todd:

So Garry, to start off, I’m wondering if you could, from a very high level, talk about how JMARK handles the onboarding process. And for those listening, we’re not doing this as a commercial of this is how everybody should do it, but we’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make this painless and make it very successful for organizations. I think that will help to guide our conversation today. Not so much on the process side, but I think it’ll guide it to how it’s important and why it’s important. But if you could give us just an idea of the high level beginning to end. What does it look like?

Garry Adams:

Sure. So there’s a lot that goes into that process first and foremost. If you can think of all the technology that’s happening inside of your organization and trying to shift from person or organization A handling that today to person or organization B handling that tomorrow, that’s a big shift. And it’s understandable why a lot of people are nervous when talking through a shift like that. And a lot of the perception of that fear comes from a lack of knowledge and a lack of understanding. We naturally are a little bit afraid of things that we don’t completely understand. And so if you don’t understand technology, or if you don’t understand all the moving pieces involved in your technology, that can be a very frightening thing to think of this thing that I don’t understand moving from one person to another, and what could go wrong, and what things am I not thinking about?

Todd:

And just to interrupt you for a second there, that’s actually a really good point. And I know you don’t mean this this way, but business owners, leaders in organizations, you shouldn’t have to know all about technology. You have your own responsibilities. You have a vision for your organization. You’re leading your organization somewhere. And being an expert in technology isn’t what you’re supposed to know. That’s why you lean on partners and lean on others in your organization to help move that forward.

Todd:

Sorry, go ahead.

Garry Adams:

So that’s a good point. Good business owners do what they are best at and find people to do the things that they are not the best at. That’s what makes them a good leader in their organization. So that’s a fantastic point. But again, to the point of the fear that that creates, it can create some fear, trepidation around making those kinds of changes if you don’t fully understand it.

Garry Adams:

So talking through some of the things that are part of that process, until you get rediscovered that maybe make that process easier, a lot of it comes down to understanding and documentation. So the things that make you nervous as a business owner or as a leader within your organization make JMARK nervous as well, or any IT provider for that matter. In order to step in and provide IT services, we got to have a complete understanding of what that environment looks like. And so a big part of that onboarding process or that process of making a transition is understanding and building the documentation that will allow the people that are managing system day in and day out and turning those through, so to speak, give them the tools and give them the resources that they need to do their job effectively.

Todd:

So let’s pause that for a second, because I think that’s a really important thing to make sure we don’t gloss over. Every technology organization like JMARK and others out there, there’s some type of process that they’re putting in place to bring you on to their services. And we were talking about this recently in another meeting about, not really a competitor, but a peer a few steps away from JMARK who was onboarding for far more, essentially, profits than what we’re doing. And we were talking about this and what we realized is that what they do for onboarding is not the same what we do for onboarding. We’re not looking at onboarding a prospect or a client from the standpoint of, “How can we win? How can we be more profitable in the onboarding? “We look at, “How can we both win in the longterm?”

Todd:

And the reason why that’s really important for a business owner is if an IT company says, “We’ll onboard you in a week or two, and we’ll have you in the first day, you can call in for support, and do this and that,” the problem is they’re doing that in a way that they don’t even understand or know the complexity of the organization’s technology. And how that differs from JMARK is, and again, I’m not trying to make this commercial, but I think we’re doing it the right way. And I’m sure there’s organizations that may be doing it better, but what we do is we go in, like you said, really understand what’s going on. It’s not just understanding the network topology and understand system resources and how full hard drives are and things like that. It’s understanding the ecosystem of software and hardware, and then also looking at the goals of what the business owner and leaders are trying to get out of this relationship. That is complex, and you can’t just gloss over that and do it really quick, which is why we’re going at this from the standpoint of looking at the long tail solution and doing it methodical and successful to make sure that the client is successful.

Todd:

But I think that’s a really good, important differentiator there.

Garry Adams:

And you brought up an interesting point there, Todd. You can go in and do a network assessment, and document the systems, and IT addresses, and usernames and passwords, and the things that you normally think of with an IT onboarding, and you can do that in the course of a week, maybe two depending on how complex the environment is. But how much time does it take to really understand the business processes that are happening inside those four walls? How much times does it take to understand your work flow and the things that make your business tick, the things that make you successful as a business, the things that create risk within your organization? And to operate as an IT partner is a very different thing that operating as an IT vendor. And you maybe had conversations about that in previous conversation, but operating as an IT partner means that you’re plugged in and engaged in what’s making the business successful and what do they need to do to move the needle on their side.

Garry Adams:

And that takes a lot of time to the point of documentation. And going back to some of the things that happen during that onboarding process, yes, we’re documenting the technologies and the systems that are in place, but we’re also documenting the people, who are the key players, what is their role within the organization, how do we get in touch with those people? Do they prefer phone or email? What kind of drivers are creating success within the business, driving change, all of those types of things.

Speaker 4:

I think that’s a really good point, because I think that from the business owner’s perspective, and not just the owner, the leaders in the business, but every single person at the business, the every in user, that’s what they’re concerned about, except for maybe the tech people or the chief technology officer who’s concerned about the network. Everybody else is worried about, “We’re switching IT providers. How’s this going to affect my work? How’s this going to affect what I’m doing every day? Is it going to make it better? Is it going to make it worse? Is it going to cause a commotion and put this project I’m working on behind for a week, because this new IT people are coming in and messing around with stuff?” And I think that’s so important because it’s easy to overlook. All of what we’re doing, all of the technology we’re bringing in is to support those business processes, and it’s just the tool that gets that work done.

Todd:

Yeah. I think that plays into what we’ve talked about quite a bit is the people first, technology second approach that JMARK takes, and that guides our entire onboarding process. And it really is ultimately about the people. You don’t bring on an IT partner to just make sure the lights stay blinking. It’s about making sure the technology is serving the people who are making the organization successful.

Todd:

So I was thinking a minute ago if I was standing in the shoes of a business owner looking at making a change, and I had this fear that it was going to be just a painful process and was going to totally disrupt my life, work life, what are the questions you all think that you would want to ask an IT provider to find out what the onboarding process looks like, if you will have that change or if it’s kind of changeless or painless.

Speaker 5:

I have several questions. I guess the first one I would ask, you’ve touched a little bit on it, but I think you could go into it further is how long is it going to take from start to finish for my company?

Garry Adams:

Yeah, that’s a fantastic one, and it’s very important, the point that we’re talking through. The short answer to that is to a certain extent, it depends on the size and complexity of your business. Obviously an office that’s got 20 or 30 people and a fairly straight forward business process has fewer moving parts to document than a large organization that’s got multiple locations, maybe different geographies, maybe different lines of business that are part of their business process. And so that onboarding process can range from a couple of weeks to a couple of months. And it really depends on the different things that are happening within the organization, both from a workflow standpoint and from, again, what are your lines of business, and are you doing one thing and specializing in that, or do you have a lot of different areas where you’re… What are your different revenue sources? Where are you driving those business lines from?

Todd:

I think it’s important to also point out that the question of how long does it take needs to be put in a little bit of a context, because the length of time is often determined by how much pain you want to endure. We’re saying that it should be painless, and we’re saying that the change shouldn’t be hard, but the idea of having a methodical onboarding process that discovers all of the ins and outs of the organization and makes, essentially, that change successful, it’s all geared around what does the organization need and want. If there’s massive pain already, then going through even more pain to do it quick is acceptable, whereas if you’re just trying not to disrupt processes and you want it to be methodical and not have crazy things happening, then it potentially is drawn out to taking a little long to make sure that all the Is are dotted and Ts are crossed.

Garry Adams:

Yeah. You bring out a great point. It’s about that pain scale, that pain factor, because the more rapidly you try and do something like that, the more likely you are to create impact to the people that are working day in and day out and trying to just get work done. So how impacted are those people today? Generally, an organization that’s looking to make a change in IT provider is doing so because there’s a kernel of pain already existing within the organization. You’re not making a change because things are great. You’re making a change because there’s something that’s not right within the business. And minimizing the impact of that additional pain that you can experience, there’s a bit of a scale to that. You can do things rapidly and potentially experience more pain in the process for the trade off of dealing with this other pain that’s over here that’s really, really causing struggle within the business, whereas if the pain that you’re feeling is more longterm and you’re recognizing a business challenge within your organization, something that you have identified needs to be different tomorrow than it is today, and it’s more of a future risk, than something that’s creating an immediate business challenge, well then you can take a more methodical approach to that.

Garry Adams:

And we certainly see that bear out within the number of these process that we’ve gone through over our history. Sometimes you’ve got to go in, and you’ve got to do it fast because there’s a specific need to do so, but where possible, you’ll like to take your time and make sure that you’re accounting for all of those things.

Todd:

I wanted to bring up one other thing related to time that I was thinking about. Often times when JMARK brings on a new client, we don’t start the onboarding process right away because there is, essentially, a queue. We have a dedicated onboarding team, and they have a list of clients and priorities that have to be gone through. And so we may say to them, “We’ll start in three weeks. We’ll start in a month. This’ll start in six weeks.”

Todd:

Can you talk to how important that is, because it’s not this add-hawk, rush, let’s do this kind of thing.

Garry Adams:

Yeah. If I’m a potential client today coming to JMARK and saying, “Hey, I want to move my IT services to JMARK. What kinds of things need to happen before that transition can take place?” Obviously, we’ve got to come to an agreement of, a business operating agreement of terms and rates and timelines and those sorts of things, but we also as the service provider, have obligations to existing clients, and we have to make sure that we’re not putting those at risk by bringing a new organization in. So where’s that fit within our current scope of what we have on the plate? And maybe that means that we can do this in a week. Maybe that means that we’re going to schedule this transition out three, four, six weeks in the future, because we’re fitting that within an existing pipeline of support and work to be done. But part of the process that mitigates that is having, as you mentioned, Todd, a dedicated team that handles that process.

Garry Adams:

So you’re not impacting day-to-day support of existing clients who we’ve already made obligations to. You’ve got a dedicated team that is doing nothing but all of that documentation and learning and building out those business processes to ensure success going forward.

Todd:

And I think it’s important that this idea that, we talked about this a little bit a few weeks ago I think it was. Maybe it was last week, in the idea that a lot of relationships are built on this idea of selfishness. And we were talking about how we don’t really agree with that. And as a business owner hiring a partner, it is so important to realize that you want your partner to be successful. It’s not just about you. You want to be successful, and that is your number one priority, but if your partner is, who is trying to be successful as well, isn’t successful, then they’re not going to have the impact on you that needs to happen.

Todd:

And I think that a lot of business leaders get into the habit of, and I don’t think it’s intentional, it’s me, me, me, me, I want this, I want this, I want this. I know we’ve hired vendors before, and I’ve hire vendors and I want things to happen faster, and things like that. And that’s all fine, but in the end, though, a true partnership is making sure that both organizations can be successful, and having a process that is potentially adaptable to your organization and that is put on a time scale that is a win win for both organizations can only help everybody be successful.

Speaker 4:

And I think it’s important to remember that pays off in the end for you when you finally been onboarded and you’re receiving service, and Garry, what you spoke to a few minutes ago, that down the road when the next client comes on, resources aren’t going to be taken from taking care and servicing your agreement to go to the next guy, that we have got the different teams that are taking care of each stage of your journey.

Garry Adams:

Right. It’s looking after your existing partners as much as those that are coming into the fold, and once you’re in the fold, you’re a part of that. You have those same protections in place, that you’re not going to be impacted by… Like any IT provider, we’re operating a business as well, and we have targets and goals that we need to meet as an organization, and so we’re going to be bringing in new clients and new sources of revenue, but we’ve got to make sure that that doesn’t impact the people that we’ve already made obligations to in a negative way.

Speaker 5:

So Garry, I have another question that I think business owners would want to know. After how long everything would take, what’s it going to look like for all the in users?

Garry Adams:

Sure. That’s a fantastic question and a very pertinent one to… If we think about what makes a business tick, JMARK’s approach is people first, technology second. As a technology company, that means a lot for us to say that, which in your own business, talking to a business owner if I’m answering that question, I would assume that the same is true in your organization. That your people are your most valuable asset. And so it’s important to understand the impact that a process like this or change like this is going to have on your people, because they’re so integral and so important to the success of your business.

Garry Adams:

So what can a typical in user expect to see? Well again, some scale to the answer of that question, it depends a lot on what their support experience is like today. Of course, our goal as a service-based organization, is that technology, if managed correctly, happens transparently in the back ground. It’s not something that’s affecting the in user who’s in their seat trying to get work done if a lever that they can pull. It’s a tool in their tool belt to get work done, but it’s not something that they have to think about. It doesn’t take brain cycle to say, “How am I going to use this technology to do this job?” It’s, “How am I going to do this job,” and technology is secondary to how you’re doing that job, however important it is to the process.

Garry Adams:

So the answer to that question may depend on how close are your in users to that goal today? How big of an impact does technology have on their day-to-day work flow today because if they’re spending a lot of time thinking about, “How do I share this file,” or, “How do I send this email,” or, “How do I get this document printed, because technology isn’t seamless and it isn’t flowing well,” well, then the impact to your in users is going to be more significant, because there are more things that have to change within their process to get them to where you really want them to be.

Garry Adams:

Generally speaking, though, most of the onboarding process is, or should be, fairly transparent to the front line folks that are in the trenches getting stuff done within the organization. They’re going to be involved in conversation. We’re going to ask them questions like, “Hey, how do you do this thing,” and, “Where do you go to get this information,” and building out that documentation around their processes and their technology. So we may ask for a little bit of their time to help us understand the business and understand their processes. We may also ask for a little bit of their time to retrain on how to do things. And not just from a technology standpoint like, “How do I send that email,” or, “How do I get to that file,” but how do I interact IT, there’s usually a decent amount of retraining folks. Maybe it’s retraining bad habits that may be just providing tools and resources to be successful going forward, but this is how you interact with the support team, whether that’s phone or chat or email or what works best in their workflow.

Garry Adams:

But the biggest impact to the in user is that of time and being able to interface with them, and pulling that information, and have an open dialogue.

Todd:

To add onto that, one thing I hadn’t even considered before this discussion that you touched upon is as a business owner, you want to understand what automation does the IT partner have in place or will put in place to make sure that the experience is as touch-less as possible to the in user. And why that’s important, because if you have an organization that is doing the entire onboarding process by hand, meaning there are desktops that has to be touched by every person, server that has to be touched by every person, firewall switches, et cetera, then that process is going to be more painful to the employees, whereas when you have an organization who has developed the automation and the scripting like JMARK has, we have a dedicated automation team, then you know all that stuff’s going to get done, but they’ve taken the time to potentially script out and automate a lot of that stuff so that we can install software, monitoring software without them knowing or without them rebooting their computer. We can do updates and things behind the scenes. We can clean up active directory or whatnot. And I’m just spewing things out.

Todd:

But a lot of these things… I’ve seen the numbers. We pull them fairly regularly. We’re running millions of automated scripts on a monthly basis is my understanding. Not just scripts, but monitoring and all the different things like that happen. That is so powerful for the onboarding, because the organization that has, I’m thinking more about a smaller IT company, where they’re going to come in and just send somebody on site or send a few people on site and touch everything. It’s more interactive and more potentially painful, because you’re interrupting people’s workflow.

Garry Adams:

And what that really enables, Todd, is any time you take a manual process and automate and turn it into something that can happen without human intervention, that opens up that time investment that you would otherwise need to take to have a human connection. And what I mean by that is, if I would normally have to sit down and run a process, install a program on your computer so that our team can manage that machine, if I take that human process and translate it to an automated process, so now I have a computer installing that software on your computer so I don’t have to touch it, that frees me up as a resource and it frees the person who’s computer that is up as a resource to talk about the things that we got to earlier. What business processes are affecting your organization? How do you get work done? And it gives us license to be more interactive on a human level with those team members rather than spending all of that time managing the technology and managing the bits and bites of what needs to happen so that we can support your computers going forward.

Garry Adams:

That’s not what’s important. We let our systems do that job for us. We’ve invested the time and the resources and the money into those automation tools so that our systems can take care of your systems, but our people can take care of your people, and that’s really what that facilitates.

Todd:

And one thing, too, that I think you… The other thing that allows us to do is allows us to be more strategic. It allows us to spend time with business owners and business leaders and actually create a technology strategy or a five-year technology budget or whatnot so that we can essentially help them be more successful. But if we’re spending all our time just shoring things up manually, there wouldn’t be time to do that strategy piece and that people touch, or it would just delay and delay and delay until some future date then [inaudible 00:31:46].

Speaker 5:

So Garry, do you have any more details you want to give on what the business owner can expect from the experience?

Garry Adams:

Yeah. I think we’ve talked through pretty well what you might experience with that process. Obviously the big piece is the interaction and the process building and documentation. There is also an element as you tail into the end of that onboarding process of aggregating all of this information that we’ve put together and turning it into something actionable. So something that a business owner can expect out of that process is when we get to the end of this, we should get something tangible, I should get something tangible that tells me, “These are the things that are going well. These are the things that need to change within the organization, and this is what the impact of that is going to be from a [inaudible 00:32:51] standpoint, from a time investment standpoint,” but that’s something that Todd touched on just a minute ago is developing that strategy. And something that business owners can expect to receive on the other end coming out of this tunnel of onboarding and gets to the light at the end of that tunnel is I now have a partner who understand my business, who understands what’s making my business tick, what’s making my people successful, and is now positioned well to help me make decisions on what changes need to be made to make those people more effective and more efficient.

Garry Adams:

How can I streamline their job so that they can focus on what’s important to us, our customers? How can my people focus on their less times messing with technology so that they can focus on driving revenue into the business or on cutting down costs, or whatever it is that that person is responsible for. If they’re not spending time dealing with technology because it’s coming along and working and everything’s doing what it’s supposed to, then those people can do what I’m paying them to do rather than dealing with the struggles and the mess of technology.

Speaker 4:

So one thing, and I think this answer is obvious to all of us, but it may not quite be obvious to somebody out there listening. If I’m a business owner, and I’m listening to this and I’m thinking, “I’m in pain today. Todd started this conversation talking about pain. My IT’s a mess. We’ve got a pain, but you’re telling me about this process that might take a couple of months to change things. Wow that doesn’t necessarily sound much better than just enduring what I’m going through if. I’m going to go through change and then have to endure” So are things going to start getting better sooner, or is it this couple months of, “I’ve got to wait to relieve my pain”?

Garry Adams:

Yeah. I hate using the answer that, well, it depends. I find myself saying that a lot, but to a certain extent, it does depend on what’s causing that pain. Because we can certainly prioritize within that onboarding process the things that are causing pain right now. A perfect example, and I won’t share any names or details, but we’re going through an onboarding process with a new client today, and there is just a massive amount of things going on within their organization. And so what we’ve had to do is take a step back.

Garry Adams:

Yes, we have our pre-scripted onboarding process. These are the things that we always do to onboard a new client and to transition their IT services into our services engine. However, we also have to look at that objectively and say, “This is normally the process that we go through, but there’s this thing that doesn’t normally happen until here, and we need to move this up here so that we can deal with that pain point and eliminate, or at least reduce some of that pain.” We might not be able to completely eliminate that or completely reduce it until we get through all these other pieces, but having a dynamic onboarding process and not being rigid in how we have to go through that gives us license and gives us the flexibility to say, “Yes, we’ve got to do these things, but if we do that thing first, we can address a pain point now.”

Garry Adams:

And to the point that I was making earlier of working through that with a very specific example is we have had to pivot and be flexible in our onboarding process with this client, because there were some pieces of infrastructure that needed to be changed and replaced, and we actually ended up getting a sales process kicked off and done before the agreements were even really fully executed in place because we knew the timelines associated with that were such that it needed to be done right now. And a less flexible organization might have looked at that and said, “Well, we can’t do that until we to here. We’ve got to check all these boxes first.” But we understand that we do have to check all those boxes, but flexible in the process to do what’s best for that partnership. We’re setting both entities up for long term success.

Todd:

I was thinking a little bit, too, about this idea of pain. And when it comes to technology, when it comes to IT services, IT support, there’s often this level of pain that you can see, and then there’s this level of pain that you can’t see. And I think that that’s really important. It goes into what Garry was talking about in terms of assessing the network and assessing the business and really understanding what’s going on. Because if you’re thinking intrinsically about the pain that you are going to have to endure, you’re only looking at a tiny, tiny little piece of the puzzle, because the pain could be open… There could be tons of risk in the network. We’ve done network assessments and found crazy stuff that were like, “How? Whoa. That’s weird.”

Todd:

And so that’s another thing that’s really important is to work with an IT vendor that isn’t moving so fast that they just want to bring you on to their services, but that they really take the time to really understand the true pain that you’re going through because you could get through the whole onboarding and then still be in a risky situation that screws you.

Garry Adams:

Yeah. If you’re not taking the time to really do that right, some of the terms that we use within our organization internally, like technical debt, the things that you may not even understand are expenses that should have been made years and years ago stack up past debt within the organization. And a perfect example is an organization that puts off purchasing new PCs or new servers in an effort to save money. Doesn’t always turn into a longterm savings because come year five or year six or year eight that you’ve allowed this technology mature beyond what it was really designed to do, you end up with a failure. And that debt that you’ve stacked up is now called in, and you experience a future pain. If you’re looking at it today, I’m making this decision to put off a cost or put off a decision to a later date, because it’s not causing me pain right now. That doesn’t mean that it won’t cause pain for the organization later. And going through a proper onboarding process and taking time to do it right ensures that we’re identifying those future pain points. And maybe that’s what you were getting at, Todd.

Garry Adams:

But if identifying that hidden risk or that hidden pain that you’re not seeing today, you may not even know that it’s there, we come out the other side of this onboarding process and realize, “Oh.” We’ve dealt with these things that we saw on the surface, but these other things we uncovered are creating real risk within the organization. And had we not taken the time to uncover and discover that, we could have ended up in a position a year or two years from now that would be severely damaging to your business. And we’ve been able to mitigate that by taking the time deep dive into understanding what’s going on there.

Speaker 4:

I think it’s worth noting, too, that none of these things are happening in isolation. This kind of brings me back to something that we touched on last week in our discussion that in order to build this partnership, when we’re even in the sales process with a potential client, we are asking these types of questions. We are finding out about their business, finding out about these things, and then our sales team is bringing that conversation back and informing the onboarding team, keeping everybody at JMARK, all the teams that are going to be involved, appraised of what could happen, so that it’s not this process where there’s a handoff. We make the sale, and then, “Okay, we made the sale today. Tomorrow, we’ll start telling the onboarding about this new client.” It’s happening intertwined and everybody’s enpriced all along. So that when this does happen, we are prepared and we are ready to start. The process in effect is already started because we’ve already discovered these things that we need to be ready for.

Garry Adams:

Yeah. A good portion of that discovery process does happen before the sale, to use the term, and has to to a certain extent to understand that you’ve got a good partnership that’s going to be mutually beneficial for both organizations. You have to understand a certain amount of what’s going on within the business, and what’s causing pain, and what objectives do they have, and where do they want to be so that we can ensure that this is going to be a good fit on both sides.

Garry Adams:

So making that a seamless process all the way throughout, because there’s several virtual passings of the baton that happen through that process. You got the sales to onboarding process who’s passing that baton and say, “Here’s everything that I’ve learned. Here’s everything that we’ve discovered. These are the things that are important to the client,” and then you have the onboarding team who’s passing the virtual baton on to the core service delivery team who’s going to be supporting them day in and day out saying, “These are all the things that we’ve uncovered. This is what’s going on within the organization.” And those processes typically happen, which if we’re on an onboarding process that’s scheduled to take a month, well at least two weeks prior to that service cut over, we’re having conversations between the onboarding team and the core service delivery team so that they can knowledge share.

Garry Adams:

And the core service delivery team can ask questions that the onboarding team may not necessarily think of, because they’re in there every day. They’re not the ones supporting the client day in and day out, and the core service delivery team says, “Well, what about this? Have we answered that question,” and, “Oh, wow. That’s a great point. Let me go get that information from the client so that I can provide it to you,” and making that more of a gradient approach instead of a hard line. This is your sales process, this is your onboarding process. This is your day-to-day support process. You want to blur those lines, and the whole topic of this conversation is how do we minimize that pain. Blurring the lines in those processes is a big part of reducing that pain. Because when you have a hard cut over from A to B, and you reset those conversations, and you’re asking the same questions all over again, and the client’s going, “Didn’t we already talk about this over there,” or, “Why are we doing this again?” Building that gradient between those processes helps to make it a smooth transition all the way across.

Speaker 4:

I like that metaphor of passing the baton, because in a race, the next runner is already running before the baton gets passed, and the person who passes the baton, they’re running along side them a little bit before they end their course.

Garry Adams:

[crosstalk 00:45:24] to see before that baton leaves their hand.

Speaker 4:

Exactly.

Garry Adams:

[crosstalk 00:45:28] the line is handed off and then they start running, there’s a transition period involved in that. And that’s true of all aspects of that process from the sales to the onboarding, from the onboarding to the core support, even if we’re backing up a little bit, from the existing IT support to the new IT support. There has to be a ramp up period there, and that’s not to mean that there aren’t, to use another industry term, hostile takeovers, where there maybe is a bad relationship, and that’s why there’s a change happening, and the previous entity is less willing to engage in the process, that exists. Not discounting that as a fact, but generally speaking, most IT partners and IT providers out there are understanding of change within your business and change evolved.

Garry Adams:

We’ve brought on clients, and we’ve off boarded clients. Just through the same natural progression of business, where we get to a point and they’ve grown or we’ve grown and it’s no longer a mutually-beneficial arrangement. And the parting of ways is a good thing rather than a bad thing, because we’re moving on to something that’s more tailored to what makes us successful as a business, and they’re moving on with a partner who is more tailored to their current needs, because it’s not a one size fits all solution.

Garry Adams:

But again, the point is that that passal of the baton, that getting up the speed before that baton leaves your hand and goes on to the next person, has a place in not just within the same organization, but between organizations and between the IT partner and the recipient of those services, the client as well.

Todd:

So as we get towards the end here, one of the things I was thinking maybe we should do is everybody turn on their mics and I want to leave people who are listening to this with solid questions that they should consider asking their IT provider or the IT provider that they’re thinking about hiring on how they’re going to reduce the pain in this onboarding process. So we’ve mentioned a couple. Let’s reiterate those, and then if you have one, say it. We won’t give the answers now, but let’s get the questions out there so people can note those.

Todd:

So how long will the onboarding take?

Speaker 5:

What’s it going to look like for my in users? What’s it going to look like for me?

Todd:

The strategy piece that I’ll get out of this at the end, where’s it going to leave me?

Speaker 4:

What kind of information do I need to provide to you to help you do better onboarding?

Todd:

Will it start, and not just when will it end?

Todd:

How will it disrupt my schedule?

Speaker 5:

I would want to ask what’s the process if you discover something unexpected in the network?

Garry Adams:

That’s a great one that we didn’t really have time to get into. Maybe is a topic of discussion all on its own, but that’s part of the process. What happens when a red flag gets raised in the process? And do you have a process for dealing with that?

Garry Adams:

I would maybe augment to some of those questions, do you have processes for all of these things that we’ve asked? Are you just rattling an answer off the top of your head, or do you have a documented process that the team consistently follows for repeatable success in doing all of these things that we’re asking about?

Todd:

I’d also add, we talked about automation. What’s the automation that you have in place to minimize disruption to the business?

Todd:

What else?

Speaker 5:

Maybe, I don’t necessarily know how to word it, but what is everything you’re going to check for right off the bat so that you are sure going into this. You know what you’re getting into.

Todd:

Good.

Speaker 4:

I don’t know if this was said precisely this way, too, but can you weigh this process out for me? Can you show me the map of what’s going to happen so that I know what to expect, not just start and end, but the timeline is in view.

Garry Adams:

And I know we’re focusing on one of those questions, but that brings the conversation full circle to what we talked about at the beginning. What’s the fear that’s involved in this process? It’s the unknown. If you can lay out a map and say, “You are here. This is where you want to be, and this is how we get there,” that eliminates that fear of what’s going to happen in this process, and it engenders trust that, “These guys know what they’re doing. They’ve got a process for this. They’ve done this before. This is not their first rodeo, and I can trust them with my baby of my business and know that they’re going to this right, and they’ve got a plan in place to getting it done.” That’s how you eliminate that fear. And not to derail the tail out of that conversation, but it is interesting to see that come full circle, because that was one of the first things that we talked about is this innate fear of what’s going to happen. If you’ve got a plan and you’ve got a process, that fear goes away.

Todd:

I think part of that fear, I’d be important to ask, “How are you going to help me manage the separation with my current situation,” whether separation with an IT employee or separation with a knowledge transfer from another vendor. That would be really important to know.

Garry Adams:

And it’s not just separation. There are cases where we will bring on a client who has an IT employee or team of IT employees that we are augmenting rather than replacing. In fact, that’s more often the case that we are augmenting those seams, because their bogged down. They can’t deal with all of the infrastructure support pieces, because they’re focused on keeping your in users happy. That is a very viable service model. It doesn’t have to be A or B. We can work in tandem with those teams. So to that end, what do those processes look like? How do you interface with those teams? How do you pass information back and forth? How do you ensure success of our internal IT support team while still ensuring the success of your core support team? So that’s a huge question to ask, especially in larger organizations who may already have in house IT support they want to keep on hand.

Todd:

I think it would also be important to ask if I’m gone through this sales process with one or two individuals from the IT partner, and I have this relationship built, and then all of a sudden I’m going to be transferred over to somebody else. Who are these other people, and how are they going to help me? And if the answer is, “Well, it depends,” because it’s a small company that is just going to see who’s schedule is free and who is on PTO, then you know you’re dealing with some mediocrity that is going to be challenging.

Todd:

Any other last questions?

Speaker 5:

I don’t think so.

Todd:

Okay. Well, we’re just going off the cuff here. So I’m sure we’ll think of a whole bunch of other things after the fact. But thank you, Garry, for joining us. Thanks everybody that’s listening or watching. I think it’s really important that in developing a relationship like an IT partner that business owners, business leaders take the time to truly understand how this new IT partner is going to minimize the pain, how they’re going to reduce the pain. And frankly, especially at the time we are right now, there’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of discomfort, and a lot of pain in the world, and that potentially add to the fear of changing IT providers during this time.

Todd:

And so it’s important to realize that the fear that you have in the potential change could potentially be undermined by the invisible fear of risk that is open within your organization as well. So it’s important to have an IT provider that can truly look behind the scenes and under the covers, and help you and guide you, and just hold your hand, so to speak, through the transition. So if anybody wants some more information, please send us a message on Facebook messenger, or you can head over to our website at JMARK.com. We have a lot of resources on the resources page that talk to some of this stuff. And fill out a form, and we will get back with you promptly. Have a wonderful day.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for attending this podcast. We hope it has been informative and help 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 eight four four, 44 JMARK. Thank you for your time, and we look forward to seeing you again.