Techaisle Blog

One of the most exciting insights available from Techaisle channel partner survey research and corresponding SMB and midmarket survey research is the extent of divergence between what customers value in their relationships with channel partners and how the channel presents its value to its customers. The extent to which the two sides do – and don’t – connect is again diverging, first noticed by Techaisle in 2012. Data shows that the channel is emphasizing benefits that have relatively minor effects on customer/channel relationships.

As seen in the data, quality of services provided by the partner and technical expertise are the most important reasons why customers embrace their channel suppliers, followed by industry knowledge and long-term relationships, understanding of business needs, deliver business outcomes, and pricing. On the other hand, “features and functionality,” “affordable price,” and “availability as a subscription service” are messages used by more than 50% of the channel, “ease of use,” “robust security,” and “industry/vertical-specific relevance” by about 40%, and “affordable maintenance and support,” “customizable to meet business needs” and “deliver business outcomes” by 30%-36% of channel members. Thus, the messaging by partners differs from what customers value.

Another interesting pair of findings from the channel survey compares customers’ most critical technology requirements with the positioning channel firms strive to attain within their customer bases.

It was once thought that the cloud would reduce the technology deficit SMBs face relative to larger firms – but it is difficult to say that this has proved to be the case. Indeed, the cloud has lowered the barriers to adopting new systems, giving SMBs access to applications and infrastructure resources that would have been well beyond their means five years ago. However, Techaisle’s SMB and Midmarket Cloud adoption trends research data show that cloud, and hybrid IT, has posed other challenges: difficulties in integrating systems with each other and with business processes, and in integrating data across applications (ensuring that data created by one application is input automatically into others); difficulty in securing systems that are based in multiple locations and managed by various organizations, each with their own set of operational rules; difficulty in applying appropriate levels of security and governance to an ever-expanding pool of data that moves at accelerating pace through an ever-more-complex constellation of systems, users and locations. Large organizations have IT teams dedicated to addressing specific issues within this shifting and complex set of requirements. SMBs rely on limited internal resources (often, small groups of generalists), supplemented by fractional headcount support from third-party channel members, to keep pace with the change that results from the constant advance of cloud and hybrid.

Despite these challenges, though, evidence suggests enormous scope for cloud growth in the global SMB segment. Data indicates an apparent leader/laggard dichotomy between midmarket and small businesses concerning IT-enabled innovation. Over 20% of midmarket firms have internal teams dedicated to “finding ‘what’s next?’ technology-driven innovations,” and 40% “have IT budgets specifically for technology-driven innovation;” 11% report that they have embedded IT professionals charged with finding innovations into business units. Small businesses are, on average, about half as likely to have taken these steps; instead, nearly half of firms with 1-99 employees state that their organizations do not expect IT to drive innovation actively.” Making the assumptions that a) midmarket firms will benefit from the express linkage of IT and innovation, and b) that the gap between large enterprises and midmarket firms is likely as significant as the delta between midmarket and small business. Additionally, large enterprises will, over time, capture IT-enabled business innovation benefits even more rapidly than midmarket competitors. Data illustrates the foundations of a cascade, where IT-enabled innovation drives business success and further cloud investments in larger firms, defining success patterns that small organizations then adopt.

The findings also expose the uncertainty that SMBs face as they structure their IT/business strategies. The most significant proportion of SMBs – 42% of small businesses and 32% of midmarket firms – state that they are unsure of what the next 10-15 years will look like for their industry. Other SMBs worry about their ability to cope with the pace of change: an average of about 25% of SMBs report that they “are struggling to keep up with the pace of change,” and nearly 20% state that they “do not know if they will be able to complete over the next decade.” Against this backdrop, a cadre of forward-looking organizations – 15% of small businesses, roughly a quarter of midmarket firms – “are battling barriers to become a digital business by 2030.” The successes that these firms realize over the next several years will increase their appetite for further cloud investments and encourage their peers to commit additional resources to cloud-based business initiatives. Techaisle expects that if and as these digital leaders realize tangible benefits from cloud and hybrid, the cloud will become an essential element of SMB business operations. As a result, SMBs will become a significant force in the cloud market. Moreover, suppliers to the SMB market and the SMBs themselves can align to bring about this positive change. Techaisle believes that mutual benefit will drive commitment and innovation on both the supply and demand side of the cloud equation.

SMBs are an excellent indicator to measure the economy's pulse in any country as they constitute over 90 percent of global businesses. They intricately link to large companies, government departments, and educational institutions as both suppliers and customers. In addition, a large percentage of consumers rely on SMBs for products and services that they consume within their households. Technology plays an integral part in the daily operations of SMBs across all departmental functions, including sales, marketing, operations, finance, and customer support.

Over the last three decades, the global SMB (1-999 employee size) market has been the growth engine for the IT industry at large. The path to business growth, strategy to deal with the competitive landscape, route to profitability were predictable and linear. And the way to adopting technology was also predictable and linear. The business pressures existed, but they were few and came on slowly. But it is not so anymore. Today, business pressures are increasing, coming from all directions - cash flow constraints, access to capital, competitive landscape, need for innovation, digital transformation, erratic revenue, uncertainties, the pace of technology change, and many more. A Techaisle survey found that a typical business leader deals with an average of five business pressures daily.

What is more telling is that 52 percent of SMBs deal with more than five pressures daily. These would be enough to put the brakes on any regular business operation. COVID did just that. Small businesses are struggling with revenue loss, attracting and retaining workforce, and lacking access to capital. As a result, technology has become even more important than two years ago. To manage costs, drive growth and enable resiliency, Techaisle data shows that 41 percent of small businesses have accelerated their digital transformation initiatives. However, for 55percent of small businesses IT budget is not sufficient to meet their needs. In addition, 63 percent of small businesses are actively looking for external guidance on cost-effective technology solutions.

Launched in July 2021, Lenovo's "Evolve Small" is a purpose-driven campaign centered on lending small businesses a helping hand. Founded on the principles of aid, mentorship, and community, the "hug and a hand" approach essentially focuses on three primary vital areas:

1. Financial assistance
2. Business mentoring and consulting
3. Rallying local communities to support their small businesses

The chief architects of the "Evolve Small" campaign are John Bischof (Executive Director, SMB Sales) and SMB Segment Marketing Managers, Megan Wine & Michelle Wiese.

As part of the program, Lenovo has committed US$1 million in grant funding to support BIPOC-owned (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) small businesses. To facilitate and administer the grants, Lenovo has partnered with LISC, a non-profit organization in the US and a non-profit organization in Toronto, Canada. What is unique about the grants (average of US$10,000 per small business) is that they come with business development support. Techaisle believes that business development mentoring and community outreach is essential differentiation. Techaisle data shows that small businesses prioritizing growth are more likely to thrive in today's unpredictable economy than those focusing primarily on cost reduction or other 'business as usual' objectives. Business growth is more than simply increasing the top line in the digital world – though, of course, expanding the top line is a crucial measure of success. But growth also includes the ability to reach into new markets, identify and capitalize on adjacencies, and identify and integrate with suppliers who can extend the relevance of the small business in new ways. There is also follow-up, built into the campaign, where business development organizations that partner with the non-profit, LISC, help small businesses identify the best ways to use the funds (e.g., prioritize paying off some rent or paying employees) which new technologies they need.

The campaign has been rolled out across seven geographically diverse cities, including Raleigh, Chicago, Austin, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Seattle in the USA, and Toronto, Canada.

Xerox, an innovative technology company, was among the early pioneers of PC and ethernet technologies, which are indispensable in today's digital transformation. 3D printing and digital manufacturing are some newer areas of modernization. Among the more critical innovation focus areas is CareAR, which enables live visual interaction and contextual self-guided instructions. From an augmented reality standpoint, it empowers an agent to see what the customer is seeing and walks them through how to resolve customer support issues.

Unbeknownst to many, Xerox IT services is part of the next innovation cycle within the organization. Formed out of three wholly-owned companies, ESI, Lewan, and RK Dixon, Xerox aims to expand its IT services footprint, especially in the SMB segment, which Xerox defines from 25 employees to 2500 employees. Xerox has a growing SMB-focused IT services business, working either as an outsourced provider or in conjunction with existing IT teams to provide hardware and managed IT solutions to SMB clients through Xerox locations in the US, UK, and Canada. Xerox has aspirations to be the leading provider of professional IT solutions to the SMB Market. It is a challenging aspiration, but having deep partnerships with major IT manufacturers, being brand agnostic positions Xerox well in providing solutions that fit SMB customers' needs and budget. Xerox's uniqueness and differentiation lie in its ability to listen to the voice of the customer, offering the best technology solution possible with discipline, uniformity, and consistency.

SMB portfolio of services offerings – device procurement to complex consulting

As we had written in our 2021 predictions, SMB executive and corporate interest in digital transformation is a unique business driver for IT services' scale-up. The fear of digital inequality is acute. To accelerate migration to support a mobile workforce, anxious SMBs prioritize automation, application bandwidth, and analytics, each of which requires outlay services. SMBs increasingly need support for hybrid IT environments spanning conventional and cloud infrastructure, which strains the IT staff necessitating professional services skills. There is an urgent need to provide business consulting aligning cloud capabilities with SMB's business requirements, map specific cloud services to these needs, integrate cloud services with existing infrastructure and each other, and provide ongoing support. SMB issues in servicing hardware at home are demanding home office software/hardware packs for service.

Xerox has developed an entire portfolio of offerings that address each of the above.

• IT Hardware and Software - trusted advisor to source and support all foundational hardware and software needs
• IT product support services – deployment, installation and configuration, PC imaging and asset tagging, depot repair, warranty services
• IT Professional Engineering Services - Cybersecurity & device security, policy-writing, and threat assessment, Cloud technologies and migration, Data Center and network design, staffing
• Managed IT Services - Help desk support, Virtual CIO, network admin, remote monitoring & management, data Backup & Recovery

Techaisle expects strong growth for services spend. Techaisle market sizing data shows that the US SMB and Midmarket spend on IT services will be US$244B in 2023. Data also shows that 97% of SMBs have become more dependent on technology over the last three years because technology delivers enormous productivity, efficiency, reach, and related advantages. However, these benefits are not always readily accessible to SMBs with limited resources. Moreover, the complexity associated with advanced technology can discourage firms from investing in new technologies – to the extent that 61% of midmarket firms admit to ignoring technologies even though they may be helpful to the business. And the issue is unlikely to disappear in the future: more than half of midmarket firms believe that technology adoption is becoming more complex.

SMBs seeking to keep pace with global enterprises boasting far more extensive IT resources – are increasingly reliant on technology but have a limited pool of skilled IT staff members capable of delivering the services their operations require. Techaisle's research shows that many small and midmarket firms are making extensive use of external assistance – IT services provided by suppliers, rather than internal staff – and that use of service suppliers correlates directly with IT sophistication. Techaisle's research divides midmarket operators into three groups: basic IT or firms that are "focused on delivering core IT capabilities to internal users, but lack ability to expand into more sophisticated applications and technology categories;" advanced IT, businesses that have "progressed beyond core applications and are actively working with more sophisticated solutions;" and organizations with enterprise IT operations, in which "IT is run as a business, providing enterprise-grade support to all aspects of the organization. Roughly 60% of firms in the more sophisticated groups use managed services today, compared with less than half that number for organizations with only "basic IT." And even those that aren't already capitalizing on external services are moving in that direction: more than half of sophisticated IT user organizations who are not currently using managed services plan to do so soon. Xerox is aiming to bridge the gap between fully outsourced and on-staff capabilities to reduce the digital divide.

Xerox trains its sales personnel to sell products that fit the SMBs' needs and are not limited to Xerox's portfolio. As Rich Artese, General Manager, Xerox IT Services, says, "our brand agnostic approach to IT Services enables us to design the right solution for customers while taking into account their brand preferences and budget requirements."

Not a box pusher, not a copier supplier only – but an eight-story building

Xerox is not a box pusher. It is far from it. Besides deploying and managing laptops and desktops, Xerox serves cloud subscriptions. Its in-house solution architects design complex solutions for SMB customers, whether cloud migration or cloud technologies in general or data center solutions and wireless networking.

Xerox illustrates its portfolio of offerings in an eight-story building, representing a typical technology stack, technologies that SMBs require – and require integration across – to support current and emerging business requirements. Partnerships with Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo for computing devices fit into the bottom floor. Moving up the building takes one to managed services requiring a specific skill set, managing software, and licensing for Microsoft, VMware and Cisco. Middle of the building are infrastructure technology solutions such as data centers, networking, storage, unified communications, security, and at the top are cloud solutions. The Xerox IT Services team holds many industry certifications. In fact, one of their engineers holds the prestigious HPE Aruba Ambassador designation, which is granted to only a limited number of people.