BY: KURT CANOVA, PRESIDENT OF TECH ELECTRONICS
A little over a year ago, I shared some thoughts about how Technology as a Service was not only a logical step forward, but perhaps even a necessary one in the world of building technologies. It wasn’t an idea we took lightly: Tech Electronics grew and became successful selling technology in the traditional way – an outright ownership, capital purchase-based model. Having run our family business that way for more than half a century, we were plenty comfortable with that model.
And yet, one of our company’s core values is the courage to change. We sensed both an opportunity and a need to exercise that courage and re-orient ourselves around the much more flexible as-a-Service model. Rather than tiptoeing and half measures, we knew we needed to make this a central focus for our business.
Re-evaluating the state of the industry with an additional year’s experience and insights, we’ve only grown more confident in the importance of going in this direction. Why? Because it makes a great deal of practical sense for us, and even more importantly, for our customers.
AVOIDING THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM
It starts with a baseline acknowledgment: technology is often expensive. An important investment in the safety of your people and success of your business, of course, but an expensive one too. As a systems integrator, we’ve seen each step of the way as technology has become more powerful, capable and connected, and seen how the cost of ownership has often risen to match.
These developments are exciting, but the pace of advancement is accelerating all the time. That, combined with the unpredictable reality we live in and the challenges of the current economic climate, places an unfair burden on business owners to keep up. As business owners ourselves, my family and I have an intimate understanding of the challenges facing small and medium-size business owners at present.
The COVID era has been, among other things, a time of difficult choices and unpleasant considerations. How are you supposed to balance the needs of your business with the challenges of maintaining staff and providing for employees? One logical way to help is to reduce the cost of ownership of your technology.
But doing this while maintaining the same old technology ownership model pushes the industry toward a race to the bottom. Imagine: integrators rush to undercut one another and provide the lowest bid, cutting whatever corners are necessary in order to keep costs down. The quality of the products and services the customer receives begins to suffer almost immediately, and before long, the entire industry is little better than the “trunk slammer” types most people currently avoid.
There’s a better way, and it’s the as-a-Service model. A reasonable monthly fee means affordable access to the latest and best technology to protect and empower your business. This lowers your cost of ownership and gives you the agency and freedom that comes with having cash on hand. It also means that when the business world faces widespread disruptions like supply chain shortages and material cost increases, your business is shielded from much of the impact.
On the other end, recurring monthly revenue means continued stability for your reliable technology partner. That way, they stay reliable and can not only provide you with state-of-the-art technology, but also better customer service than ever.
Better than ever? You bet.
PARTNERSHIP IS KEY
Why bother adjusting to an entirely new purchasing model but otherwise maintaining the status quo? If we’re going to pivot, let’s pivot to something better. One inherent advantage of Technology as a Service is that it strengthens the partnership between your business and your technology provider.
How do you currently go about managing your building technologies? Do you employ somebody whose set of responsibilities it falls under? Everyone has heard the statistics; employees have been leaving the workforce at an unprecedented rate during COVID. In turn, business owners have faced challenges in dealing not only with being shorthanded, but replacing the knowledge departing employees took with them. A solid technology partner means your knowledge base never disappears.
What about service and support when something goes wrong? Unpredictable expenses are the last thing anyone needs at the moment, and an unfortunate reality of the break/fix system is that your service expenses are almost always unpredictable. But our Managed Systems offerings do away with the distinction between selling technologies and providing services.
You aren’t just purchasing the technology; you’re also getting the cloud infrastructure we use to support it, the assurance that it will work when you need it to, and knowledge that we’ll be around to fix it if something goes wrong, without breaking the bank. You’re buying the freedom to focus on what actually matters to you – your core business, rather than the technologies it runs on.
And best of all, you’re getting a partner who understands your needs as a business, and can help guide you as times change and the business and technology climates continue to evolve.
THE BOTTOM LINE, AND SO MUCH MORE
Certainly, it’s a new and unfamiliar way of going about providing for your business’s technological needs, and change is often intimidating. But we’re confident that given time (and, of course, the necessary courage), business owners, IT directors, facilities managers, and all the other stakeholders involved will see the benefits of shifting to the as-a-Service model, and away from outright ownership and large capital expenditures.
There is, of course, plenty of financial incentive to make this change, but it’s also about so much more. In a time with so many challenges and both internal and external stressors, we at Tech believe your technology provider should be a source of comfort, rather than one more stressor. That’s been a mission for my family and our business since the beginning, but we believe this brings us one huge step closer, and that’s why this new service model is here to stay.
