Force Multiplier

When it comes to waging war, fighting crime or protecting assets, the impetus often involves clever methods--so-called "force multipliers"--that make an organization appear larger and allow it to work beyond its actual capacity.

In the army, trucks make troops more mobile than their marching counterparts; for police, riding horseback gives an officer the coverage and control capability of 10 beat cops. So what of the VAR who wants desperately to capture a contract that requires 10 technicians when he has only five? Or how about the solution provider that could land a deal to provide Cisco services if only its certified techs weren't committed already to other jobs?

Simply hiring and training more IT technicians to bolster a services business is often too expensive and time-consuming for most VARs today. Solution providers need their own force multipliers, and, increasingly, they are finding them in the form of innovative technology-staffing solutions that run the gamut, from Geeks on Call and Best Buy's consumer-oriented Geek Squad to traditional alternatives such as staffing companies and online listings on eBay or Craigslist.

Solution providers also have some new and highly specialized options for temporary staffing from providers such as OnForce.

Help Wanted

Gary Dedoussis, CEO of Core Technology Solutions in Parsippany, N.J., was facing a hiring dilemma several months ago as his business went through a growth spurt. His bench of qualified technicians was frequently too thin to handle the growing number of skillsets across a rapidly expanding geographic area.

Dedoussis' company focuses on project-based IT installations for large organizations such as retailers, insurance companies and banks. He rolls out new technology to branches, sometimes to a thousand or more sites, which requires significant resources across the country.

To keep up with demand, he turned to OnForce, a New York-based online marketplace for on-site technology services, to supplement his technical staff and go after bigger and better deals. "OnForce is complementary to our existing workforce," Dedoussis says. "It allows us to flex on short notice and expand our availability in general."

Beyond reaching new or broader geographies, OnForce has helped Dedoussis find a new revenue stream as well, getting into shorter-term break-fix work. "Our initial model didn't give us a lot of firepower in the area of maintenance or repair--shorter-term business," he says. "OnForce lets us respond shorter-term and allows us a new entre into a world we needed to figure out a solution for.

"The whole point of OnForce being available to companies like us is to help expand and potentially dive into areas where we wouldn't or couldn't have gone otherwise," Dedoussis adds. Information about the OnForce technicians he uses are preloaded into his own database of technicians and marked as OnForce. Dedoussis can send a work order to an OnForce technician, but it's processed--from work order to technician payment--completely through OnForce.

NEXT: How OnForce works.

OnForce Online

The concept of OnForce and its online marketplace of service buyers and sellers can be traced directly to none other than the New York Mercantile Exchange. The company's founder was intrigued with the dynamics of an electronic marketplace and how it could be applied to IT services labor.

Service buyers and service sellers can open up an OnForce account to submit a work order. The service buyer fills out a form detailing the work to be done with service categories ranging from copier/fax/multifunction work to data management and recovery, hardware service, software service and support, and telephony/VoIP, among others. The date and time of the service request is entered and a flat fee is charged--in addition to an $11 OnForce fee.

The work order is then posted to the marketplace and routed to providers, who then respond and ultimately accept the job. OnForce technicians supply only the labor, though; the parts acquisition is the responsibility of the service buyer. OnForce insures its technicians and handles their payments and 1099s.

Initially launched as ComputerRepair.com in early 2003, the company was renamed OnForce in December 2005.

"A lot of VARs and service providers see emerging technologies they would like to get into, such as VoIP or home audio/visual projects, but the cost of getting into them is too high," says Kevin Gilroy, president and CEO of OnForce. "They're not comfortable hiring all of the technicians before they've built up the business. Now they can get the skills on the OnForce platform. It's lowered the entry point into new markets."

Gilroy describes the value proposition of OnForce as threefold: taking the non-value-added cost out of the economic model of services, such as driving three hours to a call, to save money; offering the ability to expand the geographic reach of a company; and providing entry into new technology areas to reach a broader range of customers.

Market Dynamics Drive Quality

VAR skeptics wonder if OnForce technicians are worthy of going into the field to represent them. Gilroy says that natural marketplace dynamics drive the quality of OnForce technicians. The customer rates them on a 6-star scale, so if they don't provide quality work, a low rating will be highly visible on the platform.

In fact, when Gilroy was pondering the move to OnForce, he secretly tested the marketplace out for himself: He placed a work order for repair of a home computer.

"The technician came to my house. He was very neatly dressed and did the work. Then he noticed that two keys were sticky and the cables were a little messy, so he tied them up with cable ties, all for free," Gilroy explains. When the work was done, Gilroy was quite impressed. As it turns out, the technician had some requests of his own, asking that Gilroy complete the online work approval and rate his work as soon as possible. That way, the tech could receive prompt payment from OnForce and maintain his 6-star rating. "He knows he'll get more business the higher his ratings," Gilroy says.

Next, OnForce is going global in 2007, Gilroy says. And, of course, his team will work to fine-tune and evolve the OnForce platform continually, so that both buyers and sellers can get the best service.

NEXT: Growing with OnForce

George Harris, president and CEO of Irvine, Calif.-based GA Services, is currently transitioning his company from a seller of hardware and software systems to a pure provider of services, selling no product whatsoever.

"The changing marketplace was a huge driver. There's very little margin in product sales these days, and while margins have declined a bit in the services arena, too, they're more stable when you have specific capabilities and an intimate knowledge of the function required," Harris says. "We've always had a nationwide footprint, but it had some holes in it. OnForce has been diligent in helping us open up those new areas."

Harris also has his own stable of qualified technicians, of course, but he says that he often needs more when it comes to remote locations and specific skillsets. Harris decided to try OnForce to "walk before we run," and was pleasantly surprised.

"I don't see a need for going out and hiring new staff anymore," Harris says, adding that the cost savings are also key. "You have many technicians at your fingertips in a given area rather than putting someone on a plane."

Integrating OnForce

Scott Shaul, CEO of Springfield, Va.-based Reliable IT, also leverages OnForce's marketplace. The Reliable IT portal is an online service platform as well, where users can log on and submit work orders online. But Reliable IT actually relies on OnForce and is fully integrated with the platform. The Reliable IT portal can also be put anywhere in the service-delivery process for customers as their own private-label service platform.

Reliable IT's users can choose to use the OnForce marketplace or select only technicians they have used before, or even a private network of preapproved technicians.

"I don't have to worry about writing up a 1099 anymore, or about insurance or paying technicians and processing bills and invoicing," Shaul says. "Customers want nationwide service with uniformity--one type of bill, one portal to go to, one real-time event-monitoring view, etc. We can do it at a lower cost because we can eliminate two or three departments by leveraging OnForce."

In addition, Reliable IT is owned by Reliable Computer Parts and Services, which is also integrated into the portal for the parts side of the equation.

The services are offered a la carte, without a contract. "Our Fortune 500 customers love the idea: Use us when you need us," Shaul says. "And we have a satisfaction guarantee on calls."

His next foray? Expanding into LCD panel installs leveraging OnForce. "It's one of the biggest growth sectors out there, and nobody seems to be doing it very well at a good price," Shaul says.

Building an OnForce-Based Business

The flipside of Dedoussis, Harris and Shaul, of course, are the technicians that are responding to their work orders on OnForce. They run the gamut, from independent contractors to part-time workers looking for extra money. Some innovative technicians are even building a business around OnForce.

Crisantos Hajibrahim is one of those innovators. Hajibrahim started Virus Woman out of a guesthouse in Santa Monica when he was in school. He signed up with the company when it was still ComputerRepair.com and did his first job more than two years ago. After taking a few work orders, he noticed that more and more virus-related issues were cropping up on the site. He ran the Virus Woman name, a play on a superhero fighting viruses, by a professor and went with it. He put out some ads but didn't get any bites.

So he focused on OnForce exclusively, and, to this day, he doesn't do any marketing beyond developing relationships with OnForce service buyers.

"The OnForce orders kept coming in, and I decided to take every single one," Hajibrahim says. He took any job he could and did his very best. "I concentrated on my ratings, and I knew this would grow."

Hajibrahim says his company has grown 2,000 percent in the past year. He now employs 14 people--10 full-time and four part-time specialty technicians. He's even venturing into government work now and subcontracting jobs--this time on his own.