The heart wants what the heart wants, but if you’re still buying telecom and IT services directly from carriers, service providers, or digital transformation vendors, you’re doing yourself a disservice. See how using a technology advisory firm can work for you.

If you’ve been there, you know that telecom and technology strategy can be time-consuming and confusing areas:

• Managing technology requirements.
• Vetting service providers.
• Evaluating proposals.
• Measuring the ongoing optimization of solutions.

Not only is it a headache, but it can also erode the effectiveness of the solution or technology and its impact on your business processes. So, as we transition to a new normal in the business world, we all need to get the most value out of our technology solutions and budget, strategize a little more, make sure we’re choosing the right solutions from the right vendors, and really make sure we’re moving in the right direction.

Have you considered using a technology advisor? The right advisor is side by side with you through the entire technology lifecycle to guide you to the right solutions. Plus, counterintuitive to how most purchasing works, you are likely to pay more if you buy directly from a vendor without an advisory firm in the mix. Technology brokers and advisors have better buying power, so you get more for less, plus savings in time and effort throughout the buying and implementation process.

TIP: You’ll never get to company hero status if you keep the status quo. Another way? Hire a strategic technology advisory firm that will get you precisely what you need, from the right vendor, at the right price.

TL; DR

• Stop the cut-and-paste of your old solutions hoping for a better outcome
• Stop patching legacy solutions that are tired and obsolete just because you think you don’t have the time to modernize
• Stop wasting your staff’s time sifting through vendor noise to find the right solutions for your business
• Stop “phone anxiety” of chasing down vendors for status updates and billing questions
• Stop paying for things that you canceled last year (yikes!)
• Stop with the delayed timelines and budgeting overruns
• Stop thinking you’re getting a better deal by going directly to a service provider. You’re not!

Read on for the five ways to ensure you’re hiring the best strategic technology advisory firm.

1) Is your Technology Advisor a Strategic and Transparent Partner or a Plain Old Telecom Broker?

Technology decision-makers are experiencing information (and sometimes misinformation) overload. With too many choices, there is no effortless way to make informed technology buying decisions.

From CIOs to heads of customer experience, we’re all under increased pressure to do more with less through our technology investments. But unfortunately, the traditional process of buying a single product from one service provider brand does not place client needs and requirements first. Sure, you can go direct, but the process doesn’t lend itself to making optimal choices for your desired outcomes.

Choose an honest, transparent partner when looking for a technology strategy consulting firm. As we like to say in business, make sure there’s one hand to shake.

And make sure you’re working with a team of experts that know the IT, telecom, and technology solutions ecosystem inside and out—experts across the board. This team is likely called Solutions Architecture, Technical Project Management, or Sales Engineering. When you have these SMEs leaning in on your project, you’ll better understand what specific solutions can do to achieve your business goals and have much greater negotiating leverage with the chosen vendor. In addition, these unbiased teams will ensure the solution does what they say it does.

Anyone can call themselves a telecom advisor, so keep an eye out for less sophisticated players. If you don’t hear a lot of acronyms and things like UCaaS (you-cass), CCaaS (see-cass), Cloud, CX, Cybersecurity, SD-WAN, SASE (sassy), then run. You are not dealing with a modern telecom advisory firm—refer them to the Mad Men props department.

Whatever you do, make sure they pull back the curtain to reveal the business value of every emerging technology solution without bias to ensure you get competitive pricing, terms, and service levels.

Other ways to ensure you are working with a Strategic advisor.

2) Do they have an Efficient Process?

On the surface, technology and telecom seem simple enough. Your business selects the ideal carrier or service provider, signs on the dotted line, and deploys the technology assets and infrastructure your team needs to stay connected.

Then when there’s an issue, you realize all those promises were smoke screens. The sales rep has moved on, your account manager has ghosted you, and no one is answering your calls or emails. Your escalations request goes to a call center rep that asks you for a service ID even though they already have all your data.

An advisor works on YOUR behalf, not the vendors. Engaged advisories will work as an extension of your team, helping you strategize and set goals, negotiating to get the best terms, holding service providers accountable, ensuring projects are within budget, project managing implementations, tracking your assets, and deciphering billing issues.

If you don’t spend quite a bit of time planning before the buying process, you’ll spend a lot of time in the “project rescue” phase. If someone puts a contract in front of you to sign without a vetting process and a presentation of findings, go elsewhere!

We think the strategic advisory function is like a pit crew getting the driver to the finish line. You’ll work with a specialized group of people that will swarm your business to get you to the finish line in the shortest amount of time.

And make sure to avoid the rip-and-replace. You know the story—where you buy the same thing you already have but from a new vendor that makes promises to do better. Rip and replace does not lead to optimization or efficiency. If that’s the promise you’re hearing, just maintain the status quo for now, and hire a strategy advisor, not a broker, to be by your side.

Most importantly, do they make buying easy by managing the entire process, from vetting to negotiating to implementation? Again, this type of precise service is what you need. Learn about The Bluewave Approach.

3) Do They Have Rockstar Teams?

Solutioning: You need advisory services that bring experts to the table that breathe telecom, IT systems, automation, and technology. I’m talking about depth and breadth. You have to have seasoned experts if you want to optimize your cloud, network, and voice communications. Many will assume that migrating to the cloud costs less, but lo and behold, cloud is much harder to track, manage, and optimize across a large organization – open bar vs. per drink.

Support Team: Ask how many people will be dedicated to your account. What are their backgrounds? What are their specialties? Are they known in the industry? You never know; you might want to poach one of them to work for your company. Just kidding! That would be illegal. OK, not illegal, just really bad form.

Communication: How often will they check in with you? Or do you get more attention from your pet rock? Telecom can be like musical chairs—are you constantly wondering who your account director is and what roadmap they are following?

Regardless of these foibles, ensure you are working with a top-notch staff with relationships with leading service providers and carriers. In addition, make sure it’s an impartial team of solutions experts specializing in network, cloud, security, and collaboration – utilizing operating models that deliver the digital strategy you need.

See if they have case studies and testimonials on their website. Also, ask to talk to some of their existing clients if you need to be sure.

4) Do They Support a Wide Breadth of Solutions?

Remember the deep and wide for their staff? Please make sure the solutions they support are also deep and wide. Your strategic advisor should work for YOU. They are agnostic and have the expertise to know which solutions work the way the vendor says. There’s a reason the best literary detectives are of the hardboiled variety. They’ve seen some things and know what works and what doesn’t, regardless of the received wisdom. That’s the expertise you need when making a significant technology transformation.

CIOs are now managing dozens of providers for traditional and Over-the-Top (OTT) services with the most considerable growth in OTT/SaaS services and more complex interoperability requirements. They can make these complex arrangements exceedingly well with a strategic advisor by their side. Gone are the days when you have to buy direct from each and every vendor. Yes, you will have different contracts, negotiations, and implementations, but an advisor managing this will alleviate any stress you would have had on your own. You’ll never go back to the old way of doing business.

To get the biggest bang and have the most success, work with someone who manages the entire technology lifecycle from soup to nuts. A strategic technology advisory firm is your best bet. They will look across your landscape and optimize based on your requirements and the outcome your business needs and deserves. Your success is their success.

5) Can They Demonstrate a Reliable ROI?

Return on Investment. Do they put their money where their mouth is? Even with sophisticated new technology solutions you choose to implement, you should always come out ahead in value and ROI. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Yes, you have to pay for what you bought, but let us tell you a little-known secret: unless you’re buying advisory or consulting services, you don’t have to pay the advisory firm. The vendor pays them. It’s called buying power and commissions. That’s why you almost always get a better deal through a strategic advisory firm. It’s like the hotel rack rate versus your discount rate. But, of course, you get the discount rate!

And since that advisor manages visibility end-to-end, they know exactly what you have, what you need, and how to guarantee an exact ROI. Most vendors will throw out an ROI or savings, but you won’t know if it’s accurate unless you look at it across the technology spectrum.

Ensure your agency is watching contracts, pricing, bills, usage, and SLAs, to ensure the return on your technology investments. Guaranteeing an ROI can be impossible for some, so make sure you ask the right questions. Otherwise, may the odds be forever in your favor.

A strategic advisory firm is only as successful as its customers’ success. If you don’t win, they don’t win.

The Ultimate Checklist

1. Do they have a solid reputation?
2. Does their culture mesh with yours? Will they be an extension of your team?
3. Are they financially sound?
4. Do they have very experienced staff?
5. Do they have an efficient process?
6. Do their communication channels work with your needs?
7. Will they help you assess your current environment before leading with a product?
8. What kind of dedicated team will be assigned to your account?
9. Do they support a wide range of cloud and telecom solutions?
10. Do they have customer testimonials or references you can speak with?
11. Do they offer telecom expense management and bill pay?
12. Can they demonstrate a reliable ROI?

Summary

Listen, if you want someone to take your order and don’t care about white-glove service or optimization or saving money, then sure, go directly to the carrier, vendor, or any telecom broker for that matter. But it would be best to have a strategic technology advisory agency when you want someone riding shotgun.

We hope you learned a little bit from this guide and resolved never to go direct to the carrier again! Good luck! And as luck would have it, this blog’s author is a strategic advisory firm. Bluewave helps companies exceed their goals. Call us for a quick chat to see how we can help your company exceeds its goals.

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In advance of the 2022 Channel Futures MSP Summit, James Anderson published a preview of “The Future of the Agent Model,” panel in this Q&A below.

Agents Ponder the Future of the Technology Advisor Model.

Is brokering enough for partners? The debate rages on.

Written by James Anderson, August 29, 2022

The technology adviser partner, more traditionally known as the telecom agent, is going through an evolution of its model.

Agents have quietly been picking up momentum in the world of business technology procurement over the last decade. These firms historically built loyal client relationships by serving as their carrier-neutral intermediary to a variety of network and voice providers free of charge. Those efforts have helped them amass a wealth of residual commissions from vendors that continue to this day.

But now a succession crisis is occurring, as many agent owners launched their firms more than 20 years ago and now are looking for a way to retire. Some have chosen to sell their businesses to private equity-backed companies, and some of those decided to remain in the business after the sale. In the meantime, those private-equity fueled companies and other large players in the channel are touting business models that involve full life cycle management. They say the technology advisor must add an expansive set of professional and managed services to its portfolio if it wants to thrive. The recurring commissions they make from sourcing technology providers for their customers will no longer cut it, they say.

Three familiar faces in the technology adviser channel will sit down for a conversation about the future of the model next month. Darcee Nelan, CEO of IQ Wired; Marko Spremo, vice president of sales strategy at Bluewave Technology Group; and Randy Jeter, president of Premiere Worldwide, will speak at the Channel Partners Leadership Summit, which is part of the MSP Summit in Orlando, Sept. 13-16. Their session, “The Future of the Agent Model,” will attempt to cast a vision for how channel partners will evolve in the next few years. Nelan, Spremo, and Jeter fielded questions about the topic.

Channel Futures: What’s one way you think the agent model is changing or has already changed?

Darcee Nelan: The agent model has been changing for years. As the convergence of telecommunications and IT services has progressed in recent years, we no longer have clear swim lanes that guide our positions in the marketplace. Customers, now more than ever, are overwhelmed with the amount of choices they have available to them when considering technology changes. This situates us as agents in an enviable position to leverage our roles as trusted advisers in helping customers vet their service options.

Yet, unfortunately many agents, find the trusted adviser role challenging because they no longer feel like a subject matter expert when having business conversations with their clients. Numerous agents who have been in the business a long time lack confidence in their technical knowledge, which prevents them from proactively engaging their clients in strategic discussions that involve technology road mapping. This gives their competitors a foothold into their accounts and could ultimately shift the dynamic of who owns the customer relationship.

Randy Jeter: The growing need for professional services and managed services surrounding sourced services is vastly changing the agent model. Additionally, the ongoing need to manage the desired outcomes is a growing requirement, which comes with added costs. These changes are directly related to the way companies are purchasing IT now “as a service.” In the go-forward model, the IT buyer will see billing both from the IT sourcing company “agent” and from the providers they sourced the IT service or engagement through. The systems build, management and scalability of resources and systems needed to have a successful agent model are no longer what they once were.

Marko Spremo: Much like the VAR model changed from traditional VAR to systems integrator, the agent model is transitioning from brokering “simple” services such as network transport and voice to helping clients drive business outcomes by consulting around more complex services. The traditional services are becoming commoditized, and agents must become much more technically astute to help clients implement and utilize new technologies to drive their clients’ business objectives and outcomes. With the changes, the market opportunity for agents can move from focusing mostly on SMBs to expanding to enterprise/global targets.

CF: What’s one part of the legacy agent/broker model that you don’t think will exist in five years or be particularly common?

MS: As more technologies are required for a client to meet their business objectives, it may become more challenging to present value to a client by simply transacting/brokering a deal between a provider and client. This model will always exist in the marketplace, but it will become more difficult to succeed without providing value-added service and expertise.

DN: As service providers and marketplace providers create digital bundled and unbundled “self-service” procurement options, many clients will begin buying directly from these providers, forcing agents to find new ways to add value in order to remain relevant. For many agents who haven’t established their own value-added services, this new buying trend could be problematic and likely will further drive agent consolidation in our industry. In order for agents to differentiate themselves in the marketplace, they will need to have a unique value-added service offering that clients either can’t or don’t want to perform themselves.

In recent years, we have seen an increasing number of agents offer services outside their traditional scope including network monitoring, Tier 1 helpdesk, TEMs type services, etc. It is imperative that we educate ourselves as agents, on not only new technologies, but the underlying cultural changes that are impacting our clients and ensure that our service offerings reflect what’s most important to them. Traditional agents who can’t differentiate their services will likely not exist in the next 10 years.

RJ: Sourcing revenue and not managing the desired IT cost and performance outcomes via data-driven decisions. The decisions IT teams will make five years from now will be far more data-driven and industry-specific. What I often tell agents looking to sell or merge is you have two assets today, and tomorrow you will have one. Today, you have the value of your customer data that is going into the systems build and your BoB (“book of business”) value, both of which are driving seller economics and investor value. This will not be the case in five years.

CF: Many companies making this pivot are backed by private equity or have a headcount of more than 30 people. Is there a chasm opening up between the partners that have the size and capital to build extra services and hire more people and the smaller shops?

RJ: Building a self-sustaining agent business has multiple points of influx, which require significant investments in people, process, and systems along with being expensive and extremely time consuming. This is what is driving the value of the technology solutions brokers and end user IT sourcing companies.

Because of the influx of changing buyer dynamics and value able data, private equity is heavily investing in this space. And it’s just the start of capital coming into the space via very successful private equity companies.

DN: Most agents took financial risks to fund their entrance into the agent world, and over time, have developed a healthy book of business that enables them to maintain a specific lifestyle. Many agents aren’t prepared for the new level of competition brought about by investors that will transform our industry. These new players understand that customer buying preferences are changing and are creating value-added services that will allow them to position themselves to be a one-stop shop for any and all technology needs.

It is becoming more apparent that many of the competitors who are backed by investment money will be able to bring new software and services to the marketplace faster and more efficiently than agents who don’t have the capital. With the convergence of telecommunications and IT, it’s now more than ever it’s important to assess your strategic relationships and make sure that you are in alignment and that your partners have the same goals and strategies that you do. Ultimately those who maintain their knowledge and skillsets, leverage their relationships, and make sure that they are in alignment with their client’s goals will continue to thrive in our industry.

MS: Historically, successful agents have built their businesses upon developing trusted relationships with their clients. However, as more and more knowledge, expertise and value are required of an agent to succeed, it will be challenging to compete with organizations that can provide additional value-added services. Those organizations that can help manage the client’s entire technology life cycle while continuing to focus on the client success and trust will make it much more difficult for the smaller agent as time goes on. There will always be room for smaller agents, but it will become tougher for small agents to compete with those larger agents that provide a great client experience plus value-added technical and business acumen.

CF: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

MS: The opportunity for agents continues to grow and is bigger than ever. Pure brokerages are going to find it more and more difficult to succeed. Agents will be required to provide more value-added services, resources, and technical knowledge. While there is still a great opportunity, the industry is maturing and demanding more from agents and partners. It is expected that VARs and systems integrators obtain certifications allowing them to sell services on behalf of a vendor. I could see a time soon when agents have technical certifications and leverage technical expertise as a competitive differentiation vs. focus on selling carrier products, especially as agents try to sell to the larger enterprise.

RJ: The result of the research and work I’ve done with private equity firms is that an agent’s book of business and data have optimal near-term value.

Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Connect with James Anderson on LinkedIn.

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