N-Able Chairman Responds To Customer Complaints

After last week's article detailing solution providers' frustrations with N-Able Technology, and the formation of a users' group to help each other, CRN's email box flooded with letters. Many solution providers decried the article and relayed their success stories using N-Able's platforms. Others expressed their own frustrations with the company, whose technology helps VARs offer managed services. This week Gavin Garbutt, N-Able's chairman and co-founder, spoke with CRN Distribution Editor Scott Campbell and Managing Editor Charlene O'Hanlon about those concerns and to detail N-Able's improvements in its partner care program.

CRN: One of the chief complaints from frustrated partners is that the N-Able platform doesn't do what they expected or what they say they were promised. What are you doing to support them?

GARBUTT: A lot of people are looking for a silver bullet. We've set up a maturity process model and an exam that our partners take to understand how the business, sales, marketing, people process and their technologies work -- so they can measure themselves. How do they deliver their services and how can they improve it? It's really not just about buying a product and saying OK, I'm going to be successful now. It's about understanding what you're doing and making the investment in your people and your processes.

CRN: You're opening up a number of different locations. Can you tell us about those?

GARBUTT: We are in the process of opening 12 centers across the U.S. We've already hired for nine of them.

CRN: What will the centers have?

GARBUTT: They are sales and support centers. The whole idea is we have been supporting our partners from Ottawa. So rather than four days a month in front of customers, they now will be 22 days a month in front of customers.

CRN: Will these centers have training for new N-Able solution providers? If so, how intense is that training?

GARBUTT: There's technology training then there's the MSP maturity model and test, which is based on Gartner's process maturity model. It scorecards our partners on whether their business is ready to become a managed service provider. It looks at their finances, operations and HR, sales, marketing, service and support delivery, policies and documentation. It measures all those areas and lets them understand whether they are Chaotic, Reactive, Proactive, Service or Value, based on the Gartner definitions. About 98 percent of systems integrators and VARs sit between Chaotic and Reactive in how they deliver services. It doesn't happen overnight. The time and energy that we put in continuously to evolve these programs is unbelievably significant. We have partners that say I'm going to take bits of it and parts of it and I'm going to go sell it -- and then they can't figure out why it's not working right. We have a partner care division for people that do go off track and help get them back on track.

CRN: How has that process gone so far? N-Able has 500 partners. How many did you have a year ago? Some partners we've talked to feel that N-Able did only care about getting their purchase order. Did you take on too many partners too quickly to support them?

GARBUTT: I don't think so. We've doubled our number of partners from 15 months ago. But we've gone from 45 employees to 120 employees during that time. We've kept pace with our growth. Can we do a better job in partner care? I hope we can always do a better job. Excellence is something we all strive for. The majority of partners are very happy. The ones that aren't, we want to address their issues and help them be successful.

CRN: What is your timeline for opening those centers?

GARBUTT: They'll all be done by March 1. Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, Chicago, Charlotte, San Francisco, Seattle, Atlanta and New Jersey are open now. New York, Dallas and London will be opened in the next few weeks.

CRN: Many partners have told us they were oversold on the functionality of the platform and the investments, not only monetary investments, but other resources, that they were going to have to make to get this up and running.

GARBUTT: It's hard to say what sales people who are no longer with us have said. That would be speculation on my part. Any customers who have come to us and said we need help because we're not generating any revenue with the product, we have supported them aggressively. For example, for some of the issues that came up in the users group, we had two sales engineers and a trainer on a plane the next day.

CRN: Are they required to take these courses?

GARBUTT: They are definitely supposed to take the courses. The people that do, do very well. The people who don't, don't. If they do go through our technical training programs they'll find they'll get most of their issues resolved. And if there are outstanding issues, then we have a fully automated help desk, with sales engineers to help people when they need it.

CRN: What kind of people are you hiring for these centers? Are they familiar with your platform or with managed services?

GARBUTT: Oh, yes. Some examples: One guy is an ex-Tivoli [expert]. Two are ex-CA. One is an ex-HP OpenView. These are people who have experience in the security and network management space. With that we've hired three business trainers and three sales engineers.

CRN: Have you made any changes in the sales process in terms of personnel selling the product, or are you using a more consistent messaging to customers?

GARBUTT: The sales process has definitely evolved. It comes back to the MSP maturity model we introduced in December [2004]. That's a big part of helping partners understand what they're doing and what their expectations should be. I'll always say this is not about a silver bullet. This is about evolving your business from a commodity business to a high-value managed services provider. It doesn't happen overnight. If want to get to the Value stage, from Chaotic, it could take two or three years to evolve. [Editor's Note: About 30 percent of N-Able partners took the maturity model test the first month it was offered.]

CRN: Some partners on earlier platforms have complained that when they upgrade they need to manually go to their customers' sites to reset the probes, but they say they were promised automated functionality in the version they bought. Can you comment on that?

GARBUTT: We do very extensive and longterm product roadmaps and if any customer wants to see the product roadmap, they get to see the product roadmap. The automated update of the probes is in the product roadmap. It's coming out in the timeline that we've always said. [Editor's Note: N-Able explains that as of Version 4.0, probes are backwards compatible. For example, if a VAR is running 4.0 but his customer has Version 3.6 probes, the VAR will receive 3.6 reports for that customer. The VAR would have to manually change the probes to 4.0 in order to receive 4.0 reporting functionality. N-Able expects to offer automated probe updates before Version 5.0.]

CRN: How do you help transition someone to become a managed service provider?

GARBUTT: If somebody is just a reseller of hardware and they don't have any technicians to support their customers and are happy doing just that, they are somebody we would say you're not ready and you have to think about getting the right people, processes and technologies. We can help you with processes and technologies. You have to find your own people. We would say to someone don't come in at a platinum level because it doesn't make any sense. Come in at a small model and get a number of customers on board.

CRN: Is that a recent message on your part because some partners have said they were upsold to Platinum or to a level that they were not ready for?

GARBUTT: If you're not ready to get into managed services, if you're not serious about changing your business model, then you shouldn't come on board with us. And I'll say that to a group every single time. If you're serious from the top down to push this through your organization, we have the courses available for the sales guys, the technical guys, the marketing guys so that they can understand the value that is going to bring to the business.

CRN: But isn't it incumbent on you to tell them where they should be? The maturity test will tell them now, but in previous cases they might not know if they're ready or not.

GARBUTT: Right. And to be fair, this level of granularity was not available six months ago.

CRN: If a current customer takes the test and realizes they're not ready to be a Platinum partner, N-Able will work with them to get to a more malleable level?

GARBUTT: We would definitely work with them to understand what they need to do.

CRN: Is the users group an important step in the process of customer support?

GARBUTT: The users group will always have a place. It's a great idea. Users groups are a wonderful form of communication. Eighty-percent of the users group [members] are very successful. Two have upgraded to platinum. Others are getting close to that.

CRN: How do you plan to manage your growth? Do you have goals of a certain number of partners?

GARBUTT: Our worldwide goal by 2008 is to have 3,200 partners. That equates to 110,000 small- and medium-size enterprise end customer licenses. That represents 1 percent of small and medium-size enterprises out there. We're a longterm growth company. We're preparing for public offering on the Canadian market.

CRN: What advice would you have for customers who are frustrated, not sure what to do and thinking about abandoning N-Able or the managed services model?

GARBUTT: Please don't hesitate to contact us. We desperately want to help our customers be successful. Our partners are a very interesting group of people that have been stuck in a commodity environment and they want to move to a high-value, annuity-based model. How do they do that? I'll always say, people, process and technology. Technology is not the most important thing.