The July 24th Telarus Tuesday call brought senior technology strategist, Micki Otero to talk about how by layering on Office Depot IT Services, you can finally rest easy knowing that you won’t have to spend valuable time troubleshooting avoidable issues.
Who is Office Depot?
Today, many of you recognize Office Depot for their brick and mortar stores, offering an endless array of office supplies and print services. They do still have those things, but Office Depot is also here to change the channel. You might be wondering how it’s possible to move from office supplies to advanced IT services. Office Depot has a history of servicing the needs of the SMB market. Back in the early days, they were among the pioneers in making personal computers available for small businesses. SMBs and Services are the core of their company, and they are just expanding that core. Technology is the office supply of the future, through their suite of business services they are equipped to meet any SMB need.
Based on a survey, there are five things that consultants look for when selecting a service provider. Office Depot has designed and launched a channel program that’s fully aligned with the top five criteria.
Office Depot has done some research, and this is what they found:
- 75 percent of the SMB market outsources one or more of their services.
- 45 percent of the SMB market does not have an IT staff.
- SMBs <250 employees are the underserved market for managed services.
Taking on small business clients should be an asset, not a liability. Typically, people avoid SOHO (small office-home office) businesses or clients with under 100 employees because they’re time-consuming to manage. There is a large market when it comes to SOHO, Office Depot can help you align with that market. Given a chance, wouldn’t you like to accelerate your growth in the largest business category in the United States?
A New Vision
Many clients fall into the SMB category which brings one significant challenge, and you can’t be all things to all people. Everyone wants to be, and many of you have tried to be all things to all people, but this ends up stretching you thin. You can’t have enough resources which means you can’t maintain a level of quality. With Office Depot you can provide all things, with their new vision and alignment they can help you with the services the SMB market needs.
Businesses need three main things to operate daily. The first thing they need are supplies which Office Depot happens to have. Next are business services both front and back end. For front-end, this is everything that is customer facing (logo, website, marketing) and for back-end, it’s support like payroll, bookkeeping, and legal services. The third piece is IT; this includes all those technology functions that are mundane tasks or that bog down businesses. Office Depot can tackle everything from monitoring and security to full outsourced IT. With this trifecta, Office Depot helps you score big with your customers.
You probably think this sounds great, but how does it work? Office Depot is here to make selling services simple, provide great customer experiences and in turn help you to accelerate your business and grow your revenues. Office Depot had two choices, buy it or build it. They decided to build the business service part and are now making those services available through the channel. Office Depot also acquired Compucom which is a large MSP that has played in the high enterprise space for many years. They are now able to tap into their expertise and technical relationships to provide ITaaS to your customers. With this acquisition, Office Depot gained access to over 6,000 W2 technicians nationwide.
Business Made Simple
Office Depot has a host of business services available for sale through the channel. These range from building a brand, logo designs, marketing and operationalizing the business.
Office Depot has three IT bundles that were designed with the SMB in mind. All three offerings are priced right for this space.
- Foundation – for those that have a cloud-based environment and just want their system to work. This includes basic monitoring, antivirus, updates and remote support.
- Professional – provides security with a machine learning antivirus, managed firewall and two-factor authentication.
- Advanced – for those that want full outsourced IT. This covers server and hardware, desktops and data as well as allows for an onsite support option.
Jump into the game with Office Depot and gain a new way to grow deeper and wider with your current customer base while building new revenue streams. Their team is ready to support you every step of the way. Not only are their processes simple, but they also have robust enablement tools and local presence to support you. Their team will help you to create a solid business plan, and they are backing it up with a commitment to monetize more services for the channel. The benefits don’t just stop there. They are a true compliment to your practice. If your focus is VoIP and UCaaS, adding Office Depot’s ITaaS to your practice can take the strain off your staff for those times when you must visit a customer’s location just to set up one of their new employee’s devices. If your focus is network infrastructure (SD-WAN, connectivity, or hosted desktop – Office 365) Office Depot is the perfect fit for ongoing support. Instead of competing with you, they are helping you gain deeper and wider relationships with your clients everywhere.
