DEMAND GENERATOR: Arnie Bellini, ConnectWise
Those were just two of many revelations imparted by its solution provider and trusted IT adviser, ConnectWise of Tampa, Fla.
-- Owen Parry, account manager, ConnectWise
>> THE CLIENT CLINCHER 'They adapted this very quickly, and we have really had no downtime. They have done very well for us. They have provided us with SharePoint, but we also use them to purchase IT equipment. We use them for managing remote locations. They do a very good job of being timely and professional.'
-- Tim Cook, COO, GreyStar, southeast division
>> THE TAKEAWAY 'We have taken what was for [GreyStar] an unpredictable monthly IT budget and a big, huge IT nightmare and reduced it down to a monthly fee. They now worry about managing apartment buildings and not managing IT.'
-- Arnie Bellini, president, ConnectWise
For the GreyStar outsourcing project, ConnectWise recommended, and then stitched together, a range of products and services, from Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server running on a ConnectWise custom-built Intel-based server to McAfee's ASaP hosted antivirus offering. The project included the sale of Windows Server 2003 and upgrades to the latest version of Microsoft Office.
"What this has done for us is take our platform and basically put it on the Internet," said Tim Cook, COO of GreyStar, southeast division. "Now all we need is a high-speed connection and a laptop or workstation, and we are up and running from anywhere."
There are many products that could have helped real-estate management company GreyStar achieve its objectives, but ConnectWise, a 23-year-old solution provider with strong Microsoft ties, made the decision as to which brands were deployed. "The client rarely wants a specific brand; they simply want a great business solution and they take our consultation," said Arnie Bellini, president of ConnectWise. "We are totally creating the demand for vendors and driving the demand for their products. Those products are byproducts of our consultation with the client."
Under the two-year deal with ConnectWise, GreyStar will pay a monthly managed service fee of $575. The return on investment is striking, reducing GreyStar's IT budget from a previous high of as much as $2,000 per month. The new solution also lets GreyStar employees access their data remotely, resulting in increased staff productivity. "We have taken what was for them an unpredictable monthly IT budget and a big, huge IT nightmare and reduced it down to a monthly fee," said Bellini. "They now worry about managing apartment buildings and not managing IT."
The sales cycle was about 45 days, down from an average of 90 days on a typical managed services deal for ConnectWise.
The major breakthrough was the proof-of-concept demonstration with GreyStar's top executive team, including its president and controller, that ConnectWise conducted on a laptop at the GreyStar offices. It included moving some of GreyStar's files to the Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server and then enabling GreyStar executives to access the data remotely from the Internet. Once the executives were up and running and connected to the server for several days, they were anxious to move forward.
"Once they saw the trial, that was the clincher," said Owen Parry, an account manager at ConnectWise. "The only difficulty they had was making sure their data was safeguarded."