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The State of the vCIO in 2020
The State of the vCIO in 2020

Every year Managed Services Platform publishes a report about the state of the vCIO. We summarize the experiences of the largest vCIO community in the world. We’re not just interested in the major trends in the technology space, but how those impacted the vCIO role and responsibilities.

 

STRUCTURE, MANAGE AND AUTOMATE YOUR ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO PROCESESS

 

Name and focus

The use of a vCIO or Virtual CIO job title is not as common as we would think. The title has been overused for glorified account management for many low maturity MSPs in the past. Therefore the progressive “real vCIOs” wanted to differentiate themselves. This effort led to many different names of the job such as (Technical) Account Manager, IT Consultant, IT Advisor, and even more recently, the title of Digital Transformation Advisor.

Not only the name seemed to be shift from the ‘technology” narrative, but the role itself expanded with more business functions. Planning, budgeting and architecture have been in the job description for a while, however recently we see more organizational, execution, project portfolio management, application management and business intelligence components are coming to the surface.

As COVID-19 has pushed Digital Transformation initiatives, the IT manager role had to adopt to focus on more business outcomes rather than focusing only the technology deliverables.

 

Responsibilities

In order to avoid misunderstandings, we have summarized client engagement responsibilities in the following quadrants. Because the title doesn’t hold great significance, we are classifying members according to their business-strategic responsibilities. As such, a vCIO’s communication strategy and long term directions should be with client executives through regular Strategy Business Overviews, Technical Landscapes and Strategy Scoreboards.

client engagement responsabilities

Another important characteristic of a vCIO job should be as a full-time dedicated professional, who can supply a regular strategic-business communication channel with clients. Without regular communication this strategic focus can be lost, along with the real business goals, which are to increase a tactical line for advancements in technology.

 

 

 

Challenges for small MSPs

Many times the efforts of small MSPs with less than 15-20 employees are in vain because the owner(s), who attend this job, are often neither able to delegate the vCIO role nor do they have enough time to fulfill that role themselves. In our experience, large companies with more than 25-30 employees are able to build a team of several full-time, dedicated professional vCIOs, which can be a human guarantee for the earlier mentioned regular strategic-business communication.

Consequently, the lack of success generates a continuous migration of vCIOs, especially between MSPs with less than 20-25 employees who cannot assign enough resources for building professional vCIO services through proper hiring, continual training and process development methods.

MSP sizes hiring vCIOs in 2020

 

Skills of the job

Commenting on a human guarantee for delivering successful vCIO success services, it is important to note that however the majority of vCIOs (79%) have more than 10 years experience in the managed IT services market, they typically have been in their current positions for less than 5 years. These numbers show two things:

On one side, a significant part of them came from the technical side, which means that they previously held an engineering or support operation position. That’s why they usually designate Information Technology and Engineering as a primary function, Business Development and Sales as a secondary function, followed by Operations and Project Management, and finally, Consultation functions.

However, as a practical matter, these priorities should be in reverse. These numbers reveal why a lot of vCIOs cannot prevail as a business-trusted advisor, as they should be. Such vCIOs can be viewed as simple technical account managers, who are absent of adequate business skills/abilities and who continue their old technical lines of communication in IT infrastructure, network system backups, DRPs, and support ticket reviews.

Learn more about the 12 mistakes vCIOs make

vcio-functions

vCIO communication stuck with clients

vcCIO experience and position

 

Interesting findings

It’s strange that although we are a software development company we emphasize the human and process factors of successful delivery of vCIO services. This is because we realize that these two factors are at least as important as the right utilization of the right tool. Furthermore, there are prerequisites for any tool utilization fulfillment. This understanding ignited the collaboration with Humanize IT and Digital Maturity Group and the development of new tactical assessments that IT needs with MSP clients, such as remote meeting security risks, cybersecurity, public cloud adoption and application integration.

These three factors: human factors, processes factors, tool factors, are a key component of the profitable vCIO services.

 

Growth of the community

When we asked our clients about their MRR growth, only 30 percent have expressed experiences with an average growth greater than 20 percent over the years when they used our platform and another 24 percent have expressed experiences with an average MRR growth that ranges between 1 to 10 percent. The gap between these two groups shows that the world economy, including managed services, were increasing before the COVID era and MSPs were able to show a solid growth with low effort.

But the world has got everything upside down with COVID and the aforementioned regular strategic-business communication has become overrated. Due to the current trends, businesses are cutting expenditures, and if an MSP cannot verify and project their real business service values, they will surely lose a significant edge by not being able to adapt to the changing trends.

Growth of MSP MRR

 

See previous reports:


If you currently do not have vCIO services, but still intend to implement them in the future, we will be able to support your efforts with an exclusive coaching package and our client meeting report tool as well. 

 

Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

Managed Services Platform Account Manager Report 2019
Managed Services Platform Account Manager Report 2019

In our previous blog post, we reviewed how we typically see our vCIO community members from 2019, so now let’s look at another report regarding our other active community of more than 700 account managers that are working with us today.

 

Generate client engagement with five qbrs in 30 days

 

Like in the case of our vCIO community, the language composition shows a clear majority of English-speaking countries. 62% are from the United States, 10% for both Australia and Canada, and 5% for the United Kingdom and New Zealand respectively.

The most active movement of account managers is concentrated in the United States, Eastern Coast. However, the most numerous account manager nucleus is scattered in California, North Carolina, and Texas. The largest city groups are in New York and San Francisco; furthermore, we should mention Toronto, Canada and London, UK as well.

Considering that the most active account manager groups are scattered throughout the United States, its no wonder as to why their educational experiences aren't centralized in any American university. However, at the beginning of the list, classic technical education centers can be seen: Berkeley, Stanford, MIT and Harvard.

The account manager function is related with technical account management topics like sales, information technology, engineering, support and only partially related with business management topics such as IT consulting, business development, finance and project management.

virtual CIO roles

Between the groups and forums, hot topics are more technology-related than any other; virtualization, Microsoft Office 365 and recently cloud computing, NIST cyber security. It should be noted that smaller MSPs usually deliver these services through outsourcing or assistance from an MSSP or CCSP partners. In order to develop these transformations internally for MSPs, we have launched our “Build a Better MSP” expert guide program with a wide range of building business solutions for the SMB space. 

Unfortunately, only a small minority of account managers feel the importance in developing their business management skills, like consulting, communication, decisiveness, problem-solving and leadership. The technology dominance usually happens when owners of MSPs with less than 15 employees perform the account management role themselves, among many others. And most of these MSPs are challenged with the commodization trap of their service offering. So they look for new cloud or security services that can differentiate themselves from other MSP competitors. 

Regarding their experiences, we can say that qualified and veteran account manager experts are a majority in managed services providers with more than 15 employees: 70% have more than 10 years of experience in the technology market and the other 21% have between 6 and 10 years of experience. That’s why they have a high percentage of account managers at seniority level positions. The other reason that account managers find themselves in senior level positions, as mentioned further above, is that CEOs are usually the  executives of small MSPs with less than 10-15 employees, but are also often the Account Managers as well.

Often small MSPs do not have dedicated Account Managers, while the mid-size MSPs with more than 15 employees are challenged with MSP Account Manager turnover problems, because more than 50% of them have less than 2 years experience with the organization. That's why MSP owners try to give their account managers a clear playbook of activities that they can manage and fulfill with clients. Likewise, they would visibility gain access into their account manager activities.

So what are typical and successful MSPs like with account management services?

  • Small MSPs usually have resource problems because the owners or executives try to provide account management services themselves, among many other roles, which is the reason why they can not be full-blooded professionals who don’t always have time resource problems. 
  • Account managers are dedicated professionals from a mid-sized MSP with more than 15 employees but owners of these businesses are challenged with employees for which the solution should be developed into a scalable business consultative service with processes, predefined segments and tools that support their executive and monitoring demand. 
  • Account managers have strong technological backgrounds and interests, but only a small minority are interested in developing their consultative and business-related skills. However, like vCIOs, should feel comfortable talking with small to mid-sized business executives, and last but not least, they should understand how to put technological solutions into a business solutions context.

Be sure to download our growth guide below, and for more information on how to build, strengthen or create a more efficient Account Management offering, check out our account management Growth Solutions here on our homepage.



Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

Managed Services Platform vCIO Report 2019
Managed Services Platform vCIO Report 2019

Managed Services Platform's vCIO community has been growing year by year since 2014. In fact, we are most likely now the largest active vCIO community in the world with more than 600 members. With this news, we have decided to create a short report regarding how we typically see our vCIO members across the globe.


This community’s largest attribute is the language composition where more than 98% of our vCIOs are from any of the English-speaking countries around the world: 58% are from the United States, 10% are from Australia, and 8% are from Canada, while the rest are from the UK, New Zealand, and South Africa. 

 

DEVELOP AND OPERATE A SCALABLE AND STRUCTURED

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO OPERATIONS

 

The most active vCIO movement is in the Eastern coast of the U.S. These numbers extend from New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee; however, there are two other states, Texas and Washington State, where the movement is growing most rapidly.

Managed Services Platform vCIO commuity

Other typical attributes from our community members are their unabashed professional and academic experiences. It has been confirmed that the vast majority of our vCIOs have university degrees and have each amassed more than 10 years of experience. More than 80% of them share these attributes.

The single largest essential trait for a vCIO is their IT prowess (50%). However, sales, IT consultancy, process and business development planning are also significant skills of their expertise. Interestingly, 8% of these vCIOs themselves are MSP entrepreneurs in their off-duty time.

Their offerings come from the fact that most of them are entrepreneurs in their own right, with most of their active companies coming from small businesses with 1-5 employees (This equates to about 15% of them) and 5-25 employees (48%). Many times their efforts, unfortunately, are in vain because the owner(s) are neither often able to delegate the vCIO role nor do they have enough time to fulfill that role themselves.

MSP sizes hiring vCIOs

The other typical problem is that they try to implement the vCIO service quickly without any previous development training. They then continue a technical conversation with their clients without any business and strategic purposes. If a vCIO cannot deliver an engaging and recurring business consultancy in a determinate time, they will lose the profitability of these vCIO services. Ultimately, clients will keep looking at them as an IT technician and not as an executive-level business advisor.

Middle-sized MSPs with 25-50 employees already have dedicated vCIOs and can deliver profitable vCIO services while providing a valuable business consultancy. But based on our experience, the most successful MSPs with vCIO services are large-sized companies with more than 50 employees. These organizations can dedicate enough resources to scale their vCIO program and establish their own service definition, processes and best practices.


Most of our MSP members in the community with vCIOs typically have client sizes with 25-200 employees and offer between 10 and 20  services, most of which are related to the core IT infrastructure.

What this means is that although the core IT Infrastructure services and project revenues decrease constantly, cloud-centric and advanced security service revenues grow in their place. It should be noted that smaller MSPs usually deliver these services through outsourcing or assistance from an MSSP or CCSP partner. In order to develop these transformations internally for MSPs, we have launched our “Build a Better MSP” expert guide program with a wide range of building business solutions for the SMB space.  New services, like cybersecurity, identity management, EOS, cloud-centric solutions, are now all integrated, providing easy access for MSPs to learn and develop.

So who is a typical and successful vCIO based on what we see? vCIOs are dedicated professionals in a mid-sized MSP. They always have strong technology and consultative backgrounds as technical account managers. They tend to be systematic and process-oriented thinkers. They feel comfortable talking with small to medium size business executives. And last but not least, they understand how to put technological solutions into a business solutions context.

See previous parts:


If you currently do not have vCIO services, but still intend to implement them in the future, we will be able to support your efforts with an exclusive coaching package and our client meeting report tool as well. 

 

Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

Packaging and Delivering Scalable vCIO Services
Packaging and Delivering Scalable vCIO Services

deliver scalable vcio services

 Carrie Simpson, Founder and CEO of Managed Sales Pros talked with Denes Purnhauser, CEO of ReframeYourClients, and shared the most common mistakes IT managed services providers make when it comes to building their vCIO offerings, and how you can increase your MRR with the correct approach.


The topics in this webinar were:

  • Why vCIO services are critical to keep clients engaged in the long run
  • The five biggest mistakes managed services providers are making with their vCIO services
  • Why service productization is the reliable way to scale a Managed Service Organization
  • How to make vCIO services scalable with service productization
  • Process of service productization
  • The right pricing model for MSP and vCIO services

 

Read More about Managed Sales Pros and cold calling best practices.

 

START GROWING WITH VCIO RELATED RESOURCES FOR FREE

Delivering Business Focused QBRs

Delivering Business Focused QBRs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

You would like to be a high-value business partner in your client’s eyes rather than a basic technology service provider. Your Quarterly Business Review process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our virtual CIO expert guide, Adam Walter, who has shared his 5 step process to make any technical QBR into a business-focused one.

6 Best Practices of Top Performing vCIOs

6 Best Practices of Top Performing vCIOs

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our virtual CIO expert guide, Adam Walter, to learn how to be more engaged with clients by finding best practices for becoming a trusted business advisor in 6 single steps.

 

Terrible buying process for Managed Services
Terrible buying process for Managed Services

People are talking about MSP sales processes when it comes to discussion of new client acquisition. I believe we should see the process from the customer's perspective and realize that the buying process for them is terrible. Given the current typical buying process, a working future strategic relationship is becoming less and less likely. Let's take a look why the process is broken and see if we can figure a fix.

There are three major underlying issues causing this trouble:

  1. Unknown criteria of the decision
  2. Vague decision making processes
  3. No compelling differentiation among choices

 

Differentiate yourself from your competition

and become sales ready in 30 days

 

Issue 1. Would you buy a car for your spouse through an RFP?

A request for proposal (RFP) is a solicitation, often made through a bidding process, by an agency or company interested in procurement of a commodity, service or valuable asset, to potential suppliers to submit business proposals. (Wikipedia)

RFPs are useful tools for firms who can precisely define a request, the services involved, that is innovative and isn’t yet mainstream. Some, however, are just fishing, and end up selecting by price. They don’t know how to make the best decision on the provider, so it comes down at the cost.

The problem for us of course is that if they’re not looking at the other (non-price) properties of the decision, we’ll have a hard time to winning the deal at a rate that will let us provide excellent service.

RFP does not permit the two parties to get to know each other, which hinders the ability to align on a strategic relationship which will lead to the maximized value creation.

Quickfix 1. Actively define the criteria of the decision

If we’re able to precisely nail down the criteria of a decision, our job would be easy. Unfortunately like the car choice for our spouse, most decision making is not logical but emotional, and the criteria seem to be endless. A car can be sold or left in the lot based on its colour alone, or entirely on its reported performance in crash tests.
Our truly superior approach, that actually does help our clients streamline, isn’t getting the chance. We have to use an emotional metric to sway an emotional decision - that you are the genius of technology and have the relevant attributes and skills to assuage any doubts they made the right choice - even at double the price.

We’ve been using the ITCq - IT Competitiveness Quotient to measure how competitive a client is with their technology. These have 56-165 criteria respecting customer size, all logically related to long-term success through better adoption of technology, but at the end of the day when they have a score like 35 out of 100, there will be an emotional aspect to the decision. This is something that needs attention... and we know how to make it better, and can show measurable results.

 

Issue 2. Would you teach a farmer how to sell potato?

Prospects will always try to second guess the pros on how to buy Managed Services Provider services. They don’t want to be involved in the discovery process (just gimme a price), want shorter meetings (I’m busy), try not to make business decisions on IT (moving to the cloud is a technical issue) and so on.

Every client is different - their circumstances, legacy systems, people, management maturity and so on. For an Managed Services Provider to be in a position to offer anything substantial takes time. The client may see this as a sign you’re not moving forward.

If they don’t see any specific process of engagement they start trying to control the situation and sidetrack you even with a process in your mind.

Quickfix 1. Show them your process and stick to it.

One awesome member showed me a laminated card the other day. It showed a process of how to create an excellent IT Service provider relationship in 7 steps.

It started with a first meeting to check the potential fit. Then it went to an IT Strategy discovery workshop (used the ITCq process) to understand the business related problems and how the IT needs to align with it. Then it moved to data gathering on systems, documentation and infrastructure followed by a technical audit. The next step was the first instance of any talk about price and a contract.

Visible steps were required for a great relationship and none of them was redundant. Our member showed their client that this is how it works. The Managed Service Provider was able to drive and lead the process.

Again the process was visual on a laminated card...I wish I could share it...drop me an email and I’ll get you in contact with the author.

 

Issue 3. Are you selling a freaking winter tire?

When looking for commodities, there’s a few criteria, and there’s price. But MSP isn’t a winter tire, is it. You need to make the distinction.

Before you go relying on your track record of fast and professional service, consider this: everybody makes the same claim.

Quickfix 3. Eliminate competition with consultative approach

One: let the client be understood. We have to understand their priorities, realities, goals, personality and then only then can we differentiate ourself.

Two: let the client find out what makes us different rather than telling them yourself. Let them make the decision unconsciously that we are the right fit for them.

Both of these are a natural result of a perfectly conducted consultative sales process. This process focuses on probing questions, listening, summarizing the findings, and expressing the solution and the results.

Probing questions on typical pain points (again an example for that is an IT Competitiveness Quotient questionnaire and report) gives you the talking points to explore the different IT related opportunities and dig deeper only where needed. The questions help drive the conversation and will tell way more about you, your company and your thinking than you can get across by yourself.

After getting deep, summarize the issue and get an understanding about priority. Hint to a solution with a client story to give them the confidence that you’re on the top of the game.

As the process unfolds we cover all their pain points, and differentiate ourselves. They’re confident we’ve already solved these problems (priorities for them) and are a great partner to consult.

Conclusion:

We can blame our clients, the markets or the competition because we are facing price pressure and commoditization, or we can embark on many proactive solutions. Let's apply these three quick fixes and rock your next sales meeting.

 

IT Sales

Reporting vCIOs in the United States of America
Reporting vCIOs in the United States of America

After Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, we take a look at vCIOs in the United States.  70% of all registered Virtual CIOs operate in the USA. Because of this dominance the US vCIO trends are often difficult to separate from the international scene. When we talk about US trends, we are talking about the international trends at the same time.

 

Develop and operate a scalable and structured account management and vcio operations

 

One year ago we announced a very successful polling game called the MSP East vs West All Star Game to get an overview of the geographical distribution of the US vCIO market. The poll confirmed that the eastern coast's movement is more matured than the west's.  Also, almost a third of American vCIOs are operating in the largest metropolitan areas: New York, Philadelphia, Dallas, Los Angeles, Washington, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Boston.

vCIO by City - United States

Based on our following research you can see the geographical distribution of U.S. vCIOs.

vCIO experience - United States America

Now let’s see what we can learn from the recent research shown on the bottom of the blog post. VCIO experience and IT managed services provider company sizes hiring vCIOs in the US are nearly the same as the international trend: most vCIOs have more than 10 years of experience (80%), and are hired by companies with fewer than 200 employees, most of which (70%) only have 11-50 employees per company.

vCIOs in MSP companies - United States America

It is important to note that more than 12% of vCIOs are going to large organizations, with 10,000 + employees; a number much lower than in other countries, where small and medium size MSPs cannot gain much traction.

vCIO schools in USA

The 5 most popular schools among vCIOs in the United States aren't from the above-mentioned cities, which illustrates the wide range of schools there. Only 7% of American vCIOs studied at these 5 schools: University of Phoenix, Drexel University, The University of Texas at Austin, Western Governors University, Michigan State University. We think it’s important to point this out because it shows the vast number of choices vCIOs have in the U.S. in obtaining their education.

vCIO roles - United States of America

The most essential vCIO role is information technology (50%); however, the MSP 2.0 roles are significant too: in sales, in IT consultancy, and in business development. Very interestingly 8% of the vCIOs themselves are MSP entrepreneurs on their off-duty time.

american vCIOs - Social Network

Finally, it is significant to note that most vCIOs are using social networks to connect with industry experts, check references and create deal-making contacts. For this reason, they are members of C-level executive groups, Cloud Era and MSP network groups.

Please note: our insights come from staying open to new information.  If you find that our research is not representative of your community, please share that perspective with us so that we too can all stay on the same page.

See previous parts:

 

Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

Reporting vCIOs in Australia
Reporting vCIOs in Australia

As part of our work with companies in the process of implementing virtual CIO services we are interested in the general vCIO movement worldwide. So we’ve created a series of research discussions country by country.

Although the largest vCIO movement is resident in the U.S.A., we also observe distinct trends in other countries where the movement is under way. Having looked now at Canada and New Zealand, let's travel to Australia and see where the vCIOs reside down under.

 

DEVELOP AND OPERATE A SCALABLE AND STRUCTURED

ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO OPERATIONS

 

vCIOs by city in Australia

The centre of the Australian vCIO movement is undoubtedly Brisbane where almost half of Virtual CIOs operated, but the vCIO movement is present in all Australian metropolitan areas: Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide. The most popular schools are also the best executive educators from their regions: The University of Queensland and Mt Eliza Business School. Then there is a small but important minority who received their education in foreign universities.

vCIO experience in Australia

Most Australian vCIOs have more than 10 years of experience, consistent with international trends. What’s notably different is what we see when comparing the IT managed services provider company sizes that are hiring vCIOs:

  • MSP companies below 50 employees are more represented compared to the international trend, and
  • MSP companies between 50 and 200 employees are barely visible in Austria with regards to this movement at around 22% of the international level.  

MSP company sizes hiring vCIOs in Australia

Further, regarding the Australian and also New Zealand virtual CIO roles, it is important to note that MSP 1.0 roles are over represented compared to the international level, while MSP 2.0 roles, namely sales and business development, have lower levels of representation. This may explain why Australian vCIOs much prefer to be members of technology-focused social media groups and why small and medium sized managed services provider groups are more popular than in other countries.

vCIO roles in Australia

Please note: we’re always open to learn. If by chance you find that our research is not representative of your community, please share that information with us so that we can take it in and pass it on.

See previous parts:


Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

Reporting vCIOs in New Zealand
Reporting vCIOs in New Zealand

As part of our work with companies in the process of implementing vCIO services we are interested in the general virtual CIO movement worldwide. So we’ve created a series of research discussions country by country.

Although the largest virtual CIO movement is driven by the US, we think it’s important to have a global perspective so we try to present trends of other countries where the movement is visible. After Canada, let's travel to New Zealand and see how the kiwi vCIOs live.

 

DEVELOP AND OPERATE A SCALABLE AND STRUCTURED ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT AND VCIO OPERATIONS

 

vCIOs in Auckland Wellington Wairarapa

The majority of New Zealand vCIOs are operating in the two largest regions, Auckland and Wellington - no surprise, and the majority operate in the largest metropolitan area of Auckland. As well three of the five most popular schools are also there: Unitec Institute of Technology, AUT University and Massey University.

The most popular universities - vCIOs New Zealand

Experience and company sizes in the aforementioned areas are very similar to the international trend. On the overall scale most vCIOs have more than 10 years of experience and are hired by managed services provider companies with fewer than 200 employees...including about half with a personnel complement of only 11 to 50. A notable difference with NZ is that more than a third of vCIOs are joining the larger organizations - 10,000 employees and more - a number several times larger than the international average. SMB managed services providers need to know these trends and keep an eye on these large organizations.

vCIO Experiences New Zealand

Regarding the New Zealand vCIOs’ roles, the noteworthy feature is that MSP 1.0 roles, like Information technology, product and support, are over represented compared to the international trend, and MSP 2.0 roles, like consultancy, sales, and business development, are conversely very rare so far. 

vCIO roles - New Zealand

This is reflected by how the kiwi vCIOs much prefer to be members of technology-focused social media groups, rather than groups engaged in business challenges and competitive-edge development.

vCIO interests - New Zealand


Please note: we’re always open to learn. If by chance you find that our research is not representative of your community, please share that information with us so that we can take it in and pass it on. 

 

Build a scalable Account Management and vCIO operation

Reporting vCIOs in Canada
Reporting vCIOs in Canada

We work with a variety of companies that are implementing vCIO services, and think it’s important to have a perspective on the general vCIO movement worldwide. We have thus created a series of research country by country.

Although the largest vCIO movement is driven by the US, we are starting this series of analysis on our home soil. So let’s see how the Virtual CIO movement is doing in Canada.

 
 
vCIOs by city in Canada

Most Canadian vCIOs are operating in the largest metropolis: Toronto. However on a provincial level Alberta and Ontario are tied. Nine out of ten vCIOs operate in three of the ten Canadian provinces: Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. Due to Ontario’s high representation, 6 % of vCIOs are French-English bilingual.
 
vCIOs in Canadian universities
 
The 5 most popular schools are in the west and the mountains; chief among them the British Columbia Institute of Technology and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.
 
vCIO experience in years - Canada
 
Canada is a driver of the international trend with respect to experience and company size, so most vCIOs have more than 10 years of experiences and are hired by companies with fewer than 200 employees - most with only have 11-50 personnel. It is important to note that more than 20% of Canadian vCIOs are going to large (10,000+ employees) organizations, a number three times more than the international statistic.
 
MSP sizes hiring vCIOs in Canada
 
Canadian vCIO roles show a higher participation than the international average in focus on sales, consultancy and business development as opposed to the technology. This reflects their unique interests, as most of them are members of the IT Sales Global Community on LinkedIn (though this group is not among the 6 most popular social media groups for vCIOs who focus more on technology challenges).
 
vCIO roles in Canada


Please note: If, by chance, you find our research is not representative of your particular situation, please share that information with us so we can all be on the same page.

 
Sign up for the Client Engagement Excellence Manifesto PDF coming end of January

MSP East vs West All Star Game
MSP East vs West All Star Game

We have been producing a fair amount of research on the topic of MSPs offering vCIO services.

Because one of my colleagues is a great NBA fan, we’re now able to present the “MSP East vs. West all star” comparison.

Now we’re very sceptical guys, but since this is based on work with 591 IT managed services providers, we inclined to believe that this is a reasonable view of the real situation of the US Virtual CIO market.

But we like to be sure, and you could help us!


Go to our virtual poll and vote for your team if your MSP offers vCIO services! Choose the NBA team based on your company operation. If you have multiple locations, you can vote with each of them.

We close the vote on the Independence Day, and then we can have a heated conversation why East has beaten West so much. Or the other way around? :-)

Final Report of Survey Results

  1. New York Knicks 14.29%
  2. Golden State Warriors 14.29%
  3. Chicago Bulls 9.52%
  4. Dallas Mavericks 9.52%
  5. Los Angeles Lakers 9.52%
  6. Cleveland Cavaliers 4.76%
  7. Boston Celtics 4.76%
  8. Atlanta Hawks 4.76%
  9. San Antonio Spurs 4.76%
  10. Houston Rockets 4.76%
  11. Washington Wizards 4.76%
  12. Philadelphia 76ers 4.76%
  13. Oklahoma City Thunder 4.76%
  14. Sacramento Kings 4.76%

 

 

Build a scalable Account Management and vCIO operation