Building Starter vCIO Services

There is no question that vCIO service is no longer a nice to have service offering for IT managed services providers.

• It is a needed offensive strategy to tap into the growth potential of the prospects with high maturity.
• It is a perfect defensive strategy to keep the prices up and protect our client base from low price entrants.

However, the delivery of IT Management services is not entirely new; most IT companies have some issue to monetize on this opportunity.

During the webinar, we are going to learn a lot about how to tackle the challenges, and start implementing vCIO services. It is a service your team can execute, it’s scalable, and you can start to charge for it.

• The basic building blocks of our consulting services
• Building proper plans for the different client types
• The boundaries of our services to make money
• 15 Quick Win vCIO light projects to start tomorrow
• The process of MSP marketing and selling the services to existing clients

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 QBR process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our vCIO 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

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our vCIO 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.

 

5 ways MSPs can leverage Business Model Canvas 

Business Model Canvas has been a very hot management tool recently. Personally I have created 100+ Business Models over the last couple years for clients and for our companies. One of our companies is even a "Use Case" in the Hungarian edition of the Business Model Generation Book. We have developed different ways for IT managed services providers to use the tool for different reasons. Let's take a look at 5 practical ways to leverage this tool.

If you do not know the tool, check it out here: for books, apps, online learning and so on. You can watch a 2 minute introduction here: 

The idea of a Business Model Canvas is visualizing and simplifying complex things. It’s divided into nine key building blocks of the business, and uses sticky-notes to put elements and content on the Canvas. You can visualize an existing business model, brainstorm around it and also develop new business models.

As MSP leaders, vCIOs should have this tool in our toolbox for different types of workshops. The tool is perfect for leading and facilitating a conversation about the client's business, rather than their technology. It helps us be part of a business discussion and cut the tech talk.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

1. Understanding your client’s business

Many IT companies put too much focus on the infrastructure of their clients and neglect the need to understand their businesses. If you have a Quarterly Business Review, let's bring the Canvas and go through their business. The Canvas has many helpful features that ensure you won’t get lost - the worst that can happen is the client rambles on about their business, and trust that you understand them. You can add this little event to the onboarding process as well, so every client has this experience from the first phase.

One of our clients in Louisiana used this tool to meet the CEO. The Internal IT Manager was the gatekeeper and did not want them to contact the management directly. The IT Manager was not able to answer such business-related questions, so The Business Model Canvas provided the chance to go back to the Board Room again and talk to the CEO personally.

2. IT Strategy Meeting

When we create an IT strategy we need a clear understanding of the business context. The Business Model Canvas is a great tool for us and for the client to brainstorm. If for example "Fast Delivery" is one of the client's value propositions, the canvas helps focus on their need for process automation or collaboration tools.  If their priority is to get the clients closer and increase the personal touch, why don’t they use advanced Project Management and CRM tools?

One of our clients in New Jersey has done the Modeling, and the main initiatives of the Business Model Canvas went into the IT strategy directly. Their main focus went to IT, because they felt the virtual CIO was able to manage those initiatives.

3. Discovery Workshop

Of course every MSP is playing the commodity field now. Differentiation is key when we want to land a new client. Starting off with a Business Model Canvas is going to generate confidence in the prospect's mind. No IT company out there is doing such a workshop. They’ll feel they’re making a real business connection while also talking to a tech expert.

One of our clients did that and the client response was: "Geno, you are the first service provider ever who has asked us such questions. Most of them just checked our server room." He landed the deal right there!

4. Business - Technology alignment with the IT Management Canvas

Our consultative sales process has an IT Management Discovery tool called the 7C IT Management Canvas. The shape is the same as the Business Model Canvas, but we have IT management and IT technology related content inside. We use a questionnaire that we complete with the prospect, and score them across several different dimensions. It is 100% compatible with the Business Model Canvas, so we suggest using both for clients of 50 or more people.

The Business Model Canvas feeds the 7C IT Management Canvas, and shows the Business - Technology alignment. It is just a little extra work, but it maps out the company business and technology very clearly. Of course, all the actions we take from here will be both technology and business oriented, and thus every tech-related project will have the business case in mind.

5. Your thinking tool

Most of the time you use the Business Model Canvas to manage your clients' businesses. I strongly suggest playing within your organization as well. Carve out your current model, create alternatives and brainstorm around different models and ideas.

Let's use our previous article as an example as we go through the MSP 1.0 and MSP 2.0 typical business models. Let's use these thoughts as conversation starters with your clients. Get your team together, do a workshop from scratch and ask the questions in the Canvas. You’ll be surprised how much alignment it can achieve.

If you are interested in learning more about how to leverage this tool, check out a demo with one of our Customer Success Managers.

Implementation of the Virtual CIO Services with Rich Anderson

Implementing vCIO services can be a challenge. New ways of thinking, new lines of services, pricing and packaging, and service delivery all abound. Rich Anderson, CEO of Imagine IT has been working on this for a couple of months now. I asked him about his experiences, challenges, solutions and results. If you are thinking on implementing Virtual CIO services, or if you have been working on that already, let’s pick his brain. He’ a smart guy and explains everything very clearly with tons of hints and tips. Enjoy!

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 QBR process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our vCIO 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

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our vCIO 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.

 

Starting vCIO projects the right way

Many IT managed services providers see opportunities with their clients that aren’t related to the existing infrastructure. Clients are instead looking for help deciding which CRM they should use; how they should migrate their many Excel spreadsheets to a Process Management application or with something else that needs IT management expertise. You want to help them, of course; you are the trusted advisor, even a dedicated vCIO. The main question is: how do you start a project AND start charging for your project management duties from day one?

The short answer is that you can start planning a solution, if you have the right scope for the project. However the process of scoping the project takes time, research and meetings. Clients are reticent to pay for this because it takes place before the sales cycle. To overcome this challenge, you have to make a deliverable product out of this process.

For that you need to apply a Project Best Practice called "Visualization" to be able to get from vague ideas, concepts and needs, to a written document that consists of everything needed to start planning the project. Without this Best Practice, the process is not tangible to your client and thus not a billable item.

For example, you may be approached to give suggestions for productivity suites, where some basic collaboration tool can be considered as a small-scope project. Medium-scope projects are a review of the current accounting system and giving some suggestions, or being asked to help them fix one process of their teamwork with some project management tool.

Anything bigger like Document Management and Sharepoint-type projects are large or custom projects.

Still, in the end your product will be: enabling your clients to make decisions, and finding the right solutions for their business problems. We can can design some project planning and strategic implementation, but we have to create a separate service for that!

The result of not having proper visualization up front: showing up to the client with no value for necessary visualization phase.

What is Visualization?

Visualization means clearly picturing the desired results before embarking on the project. It answers the questions of what we want to achieve and why. For a small project, it is enough to have an informal call with every stakeholder to find out what they need at the end of the project. For a more complex project, this needs to be in a written format so priorities among the different issues can be set. The more people involved the more sense it makes sense to communicate the priorities in one statement that includes all of the stakeholders. This creates more alignment upfront; however, it takes more time to complete. For larger initiatives, serious kickoff meetings need to be facilitated to talk through the problems and discover opportunities, threats, and different opinions.

Our objective at this point is just to create a Visualization of the project. It has a defined deliverable, the process to achieve it and a price tag to sell it.

We have developed a Use Case showing how to start vCIO services with activities like visualization to bring more value to the client here:

Goals of Visualization:

1. Starting with the end in mind; defining the "why": Visualization is going to create a picture of the end we have in mind to remind us why we want the solution. What is the original problem we want to solve? What would be needed for success? What does success mean anyway? If we are putting together a cloud strategy for the client, what is the overall need or business case?

2. Defining the required outcomes: To properly evaluate the project’s progress, the desired outcomes must be drawn from the client - not always easy to do. We need to have more than a ‘feeling’ of what needs to be done, or we can easily fail. The required outcomes are statements of what the client needs.

3. Feasibility check: Dreaming big is easy, but executing the project with a positive ROI is critical. There is a chance that the solution is will not produce a minimum required return. We need more time and money to invest where we can see results. In most of these cases we figure out a compromise to get the required outcomes - such as scaling back some features.

4. Broad Alignment: Alignment on what we need to achieve and what are the factors of success is needed among the client and vendor teams. As virtual CIOs, we are not going to manage only our team’s infrastructure projects, but projects involving different vendors as well. We have to create the necessary baselines for working together.

5. Assign the potential resources: Before we plan, we have to understand what capacities the client has and what is needed from outside. This is of course a project design input but will also determine the potential budget of the project. The more resources they need from outside, the higher the budget will be. We must also understand required amount of project management to determine the proper amount of support.

6. Create the inputs for the planning phase: We have to put all of this together to make sure we can proceed to the planning phase. Set clear goals, keep the end in mind and focus on required outcomes for a quick plan. Anticipate unforeseen questions will arise in the planning phase...this just means some more meetings, more changes and more work for everybody.

Process of Visualization:

1. Key Stakeholder Interviews: Key Stakeholder interviews are necessary to learn all that is needed from key people. A stakeholder can be the CEO, the owner, the manager of the department or even an employee who will benefit from the project. Our goal is to discover their need, the outcome they are looking for and their priorities.

We sit down in a 1-1 setting with the stakeholder and conduct the interview. It should be a formal meeting, but it can be done over the phone if needed. We highly recommend using a template like the vCIO-Project-Stakeholder-Sheet in our vCIO Quickstarter Workbook. It helps you stay organized and keep track of every detail for later. It is a fairly simple process to follow.

For a small project, it usually takes 1-2 interviews, for a medium at least 3-4 to find out the needed deliverables. You can count on 30-45 minutes each.


2. 10 Point Exercises: We have been using the 10 Point Exercises in many ways: during sales, to find opportunities, for vCIO activities and so on. In most cases, we sell a 10 Point Exercise that raises the questions that come with “we need a project.” It can be sold in a Quarterly Business Review, or it can be sold during the vCIO process, and will function here to support the goals of visualization.

The exercise itself is a group session in which you facilitate the people involved in the project to make decisions. They need to prioritize the various aspects of the project and understand each other's individual perspective. It is a very powerful exercise!

The end of the exercise is a prioritized list about the needed deliverables of the project.

For a small project, you need 1-2 exercises; for medium projects it usually takes 4-6 sessions. One session takes about 25-30 minutes to do. If you put together 2-3 sessions in one, you can save time.

3. Project Initiation: If we have agreement on the project definition and a vision of the requirements for success in mind, we can proceed with planning. This means putting some integration and making some decisions. For a quick overview, you can use the vCIO Project Management Workspace.

We can put together the Start/End date, the roles, the project manager, vendors if any, and so on. That means, if the team agrees on the priorities, we can move forward and start the plan of the project.

Putting together all the things needed for a small project with little research takes 1-2 hours. For medium projects, it can consume 4-8 hours to put together your thoughts.

Check this video for further information about visualization.

  

Conclusion:

Without having the process to get together all the preliminaries of starting a project, we would be in trouble. Either we have to pay forward a lot of hours to make it happen for free, or we start project planning without knowing the priorities.

A small visualization with 1-2 interviews and 1-2 10 Point Exercises takes about 3-5 consultation hours to conduct. It is somewhere in the $500 - $1000 range. It is great for choosing SaaS applications for productivity and process management for even smaller team collaboration tools.

A medium visualization with 3-4 interviews and 3-4 10 Point Exercises takes about 4-7 consultation hours to conduct and is in the $1500 - $2000 range. It is great for choosing a CRM, or for a basic accounting review and evaluation package, project management tools and advanced collaboration tools.

Leveraging the IT Quarterly Business Reviews

Many IT managed services providers are doing some type of Quarterly Business Reviews (QBR) and most have trouble delivering it with the right cadence and voice.  It’s too technical and fails to shows business value to the executive team. Introducing QBRs poorly can backfire and land the MSP into a more technical role. Let's take a look at some cool techniques to engage clients with Quarterly Business Reviews.

Upsell your clients with strategic QBRs and IT strategy meetings

Hint #1 - Talk business

Challenge: Whereas it is not a significant challenge to talk business with most owners as they are fluent with marketing, can connect the dots with typical business process issues and understand the overall pains of the client, this is not the case with tech people.

Solution: We cannot give every account manager an MBA but we can help them to ask the right questions. Questions make magic happen in this process, especially if they discover a problem related to the customer’s business. We have put together Executive QBR Power Questions that discuss relevant business issues during the meeting. Asking the right questions can engage the client and allow you to offer technical solutions for most business problems.

Hint #2 - Find out some bottlenecks

Challenge: We all know clients who could do with a better document management system, better task management or a better general management system for the company. The trick is to qualify them quickly and get them on the same page during the QBR.

Solution: Graders can be used to qualify clients for a defined IT solution. For example, we can ask seven relevant questions with possible Yes/No options about their general productivity. The seven questions lead to 7 solutions/best practices/features and so on. Where they have low scores a ready productivity application can help solve their issues. This helps start a business conversation based on real needs. Graders about security, document management, SaaS applications are a great way to introduce this conversation.

Hint #3 - Proactive Development

Challenge: If we keep checking the warranties, antivirus subscription, bomb reports, risks and hardware replacements during the QBRs, it can become a boring technical conversation. We’d rather show them we would like to proactively develop their business and elevate their maturity.

Solution: Proactive Customer Development is an expression we use to truly assess where they are and the needed next steps in becoming more competitive with IT. It can be to implement IT Budgets, to better manage their vendors, to invest in an IT strategy workshop or just focus on NIST cyber security. We can pre-package 10-15 QuickWin IT management projects and typically sell these easy to fix low hanging fruit items. It can be a Disaster Recovery Plan, a Mobile Security Project or training the staff in going online securely. We use a questionnaire to measure many different elements, to learn what’s missing and to offer prepackaged projects.

Hint #4 - Internal Compliance

Challenge: If we do not set some goals or achieve mutual vision with the clients, it will be hard to be on the same page down the road. Setting the stage for what we mean about being competitive with IT is important. Without that, we are missing the business context of our services. It can lead to conversations of costs instead of investments.

Solution: The QBR is a questionnaire and report determining the IT benchmark by which we measure the progress for our clients. It sets standards and constraints of internal compliance with which we suggest to them. The questions are business rather than technology related, designed to understand the ‘what and why’ needed to be in place to be competitive with IT. Why does it matter to have an IT strategy? Why does it make sense to manage the vendors and check the budget? Why does it make sense to manage every device from a security point of view? It helps you to use the QBR to set goals and deliverables for the next quarter, and then track progress. This exercise can generate many opportunities with your clients.

Conclusion:

There are many ways to make the QBR better by being more client focused. The tools you’ve seen here are integral Managed Services Platform methods, and just a sample of the opportunities.  

Business focus need not be so complicated...we have the tools needed to make it easy and engaging for both you and your clients.

Calculating the utilization and profitability of a vCIO

How many clients can a vCIO viably service, and what is the utilization rate? How much revenue does a virtual CIO need to generate? What is the W2 goal rate for a virtual CIO? Many questions like these need to be examined if we want to structure our virtual CIO services successfully. Let's use the vCIO calculation sheet to figure it out!

How to transition from the server room to the boardroom

This week's question: How do I become a virtual CIO when I'm “just a tech?”  This week Denes and Myles Olson discuss a path to transition to the virtual CIO role. You may be more comfortable in the server room, but now you're needed in the boardroom.

To learn more, visit our MSP 2.0 Business Building Platform. 

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 QBR process is a critical part of influencing their engagement up to a higher level. Watch this recorded webinar with our vCIO 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

ADAM WALTER AT VIRTUAL C

Watch this interview with our vCIO 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.

 

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

• Virtual CIOs in New Zealand
• Virtual CIOs in Australia
• Virtual CIOs in Canada
• Managed Services Platform virtual CIO report 

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

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.

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.  
  
  

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.

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:

• Virtual CIOs in New Zealand
• Virtual CIOs in United States
• Virtual CIOs in Canada
• Managed Services Platform virtual CIO report 

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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. 

• Virtual CIOs in United States
• Virtual CIOs in Australia
• Virtual CIOs in Canada
• Managed Services Platform virtual CIO report