Video: 1Path CRO on Defining the Mid-Market and its Customers’ Needs

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso my guest in this episode is Arman aayi cro of onepath a true endtoend managed service provider on harmont explains his approach to building trust with clients and his process of standardizing it across organizations whether it's a company owned by private Equity or it's a senior living Care Facility plus he goes into how a soured customer relationship can be saved with an open and honest conversation how are you doing you fairly caffeinated excellent uh not caffeinated enough lately or yet I guess not caffeinated enough yet I'm upset nobody hands one to me when I wake up in the morning so right there I would pay good money for that service good money talk to me about what One path is and the services and solutions that you offer we are a man services provider we specifically Target the midm market and it's been a bit of an interesting journey to get to that place we provide a series of services to our clients we generally bucket them based off of various categories Cloud security IT services Etc that type of lingo the original company is about 25 years old not under the original one paath name the original company was called Blue Wave Computing what about your customers what verticals do they typically operate in and how about their size so we call it midsize Enterprise um which really is mid-market and we're looking at that I would call it 100 minimum to maximum 5,000 employees we generally settle in that 250 to about 2,000 range is our sweet spot most msps are specifically focused on the Enterprise or specifically focused on SMB and that's kind of the thesis for how we've molded this company over the last sixish sest years since I've been here is there's a gap in the middle right there's this segment of companies that are all very large either by revenue or by employee account sometimes both and they're not well served they have a specific niche in terms of what they need they're not ready to call themselves Enterprise and they just want to like Outsource help desk only type work where it's very transactional how low can you get the per ticket price we don't really care who's on the other end of the phone and then the SMB Market which is really focused on okay we really want to know the person on the other end of the phone I want to speak to Arman I want to speak to Katie I want to speak to John I want to speak to Allison whatever that might be and so I remember actually four years ago when we went through a pretty major turnaround we sat in the room and we said what does the midmarket want at the end of that conversation will realize it's it's kind of a blend of these two things they want to be connected to their provider they still want to know the person on the other end of the phone first and basis but they need more Enterprise class and mature scaled Technologies right that that are both at a point where they're scales for large businesses today but they can scale with businesses that are growing pretty rapidly and so we were able to structure the company around that kind of ethos and we found a lot of success if you would have asked me who our customers are a year ago two years ago I would have said very simply Professional Services Finance Professional Services legal manufacturing or Healthcare and what we've realized is it's actually less about the industry and it's more about the investment structure of the company where we really really shine and where we've been able to kind of hone both our marketing and our our client facing efforts is private equity-backed organizations that have a a major growth an investment thesis and the reason I say it like that is because there's a couple similarities all of these companies have regardless of what industry they're in one they need the I'm going to call it tricky financing that is necessary when you have a private Equity owner uh many understand what I mean by that they have an expectation that they are going to grow rapidly through organic and inorganic means so they have a large number of offices or disperate companies that they're trying to bring in rapidly and they all need to be be integrated with disparate Technologies disparate systems disparate cultures and they need a rapid I'm I'm going to say again integration plan associated with their investment thesis um and then number three they see technology as a fundamental path towards their ability to scale and so all these companies end up having employees Across the Nation multiple different offices again multiple different cultures and we found a niche in really being able to support them in that growth and investment thesis and deliver it services along the way one of the particular verticals that you tote on your site is Senior Living why is this a specialty or a niche for One path and what does this IND industry often lack because in my mind I would roll it up under Healthcare so how does it differ from that Healthcare is a very vast industry right and and across the spectrum of healthcare we look at it as if like okay well they're under hippo requirements there's certain regul ations or there are certain audits specifications that these companies are going to have to follow and so they're all the same well it's not true at all a dentist's office operates very differently than an emergency room operates very differently than an outpatient surgery center operates very differently than an inperson care facility and while they might be in the same industry their core ethos is the same delivering Health Services to individuals the way their organization is structured is very different and so when you look at Healthcare as a whole at one point we said Healthcare and we realize oh there's like everything is in healthare do we want pedmont Hospital down the street to give us a call and we do all of their IT services maybe but if we think about the clients we have today they're not the type of client that we're picking up generally speaking why is that well Hospital Systems aren't in these massive high growth multi-site private Equity backed kind of structures that I mentioned why Senior Living Well a few things one they have an interesting business use case that operates very similarly to a lot of the other customers we support that aren't in the healthcare industry and that's that most of their users are not technical they are often in this cycle where they're getting bought up and gobbled up a conglomerate of senior care facilities that's going around and buying up Mom and popop shops consolidating into what is now a 50 site or organization all that needs to standardize its technology stack and so when you look at senior living specifically and there's some others that are doing this you see a lot of outpatient surgery centers are doing this sometimes Urgent Care is doing this but what ends up happening is that same kind of structure that I defined when I was talking about the private Equity Market exists exactly within the senior living space and so we can find those companies that are not necessarily I'm just a small Senior Living facility I have 100 beds I have this many rooms I have this much you know need but we can find the organization saying okay I'm going and I'm buying up all the other Senior Care Facilities that exist in the nation I'm going to standardize Finance it I'm going to standardize HR and I'm going to have these kind of corporate shared services functions that are provided to all of them reduce my cost that way but each of these facilities is going to Rebrand under the one umbrella and now One path we get to support that much bigger entity let's talk more about customers because when I first met with you you told me that you don't think the MSP industry has done a very good job in creating an easy to understand catalog for customers to be able to engage with you and you're wondering how can we kind of fix that how can we make that better this year first of all elaborate on your way of thinking of that for me tell me a little bit more about why you think that and then talk to me about how One path is changing the way that customers are able to engage with you basically to make it an easier smoother experience for them I love this industry for many reasons and I think we have a lot of immaturities in this industry the idea of sales marketing product and development these these things are very foreign to us we're a very engineering Le industry it it makes us strong we're technical Le industry most of of the owner operators in this industry grew up through the engineering and operations ranks and there's a lot of value and Merit in that what what you potentially lose in that structure is common practices that help organizations scale rapidly and those practices have been refined in other Industries software as a service in infrastructure as a service markets and security as a service markets and so there's a lot of wisdom that exists kind of outside of our MSP bubble around how to build build and grow organizations how do you Market yourself how do you build a brand how do you go to market how do you structure a product portfolio and so I tend to look at us again the whole of the MSP industry as very immature in these regards but that presents a a pretty cool opportunity to be Innovative in how we go to market with our services with our product packaging etc etc when I look at us specifically and I look at the market we're going after we're saying going after a market that's not well defined right it's not a market that a bunch of other people are going after it's new in that regard right it has this specific need I want local feeling plus I want technology expertise so that influences the product structure and then we're saying at the same time that the industry as a whole doesn't have a lot of mature product development experience so that influences how we go and say okay wait a second this is how we do it as an industry but we don't necessarily think that our industry is very mature in this regard is the commonly practiced way the right way maybe not and so you you start to look at your organization and say okay at at its core am I able to facilitate what my clients need as it relates to understanding what they're buying from us understanding what they're not because it can't be everything for free right and adding together a call it colle of products and services that both is profitable for me and is valuable for my clients and those questions ultimately led to the answer I think we could do better and so this year for me is a lot of spending time focused on first of all what other Industries have done to get the their products and services in the hands of their clients and make it easy for their clients to buy more when they're ready when they're looking right and I use that when they're looking because you know there's an industry that's done great at figuring out how to help their clients buy more but they have this stigma because they're too pushy used car sales right we don't want to go that far but we also want to make sure that we have the mechanism to be there when our client is ready and they're looking and so that that presents a unique opportunity and number three just because we're going after a different Market doesn't mean we lose the core responsibility of an MSP to itself which is to standardize on on a reference architecture and so how do we build a reference architecture that aligns well to this midmarket client such that we can have the same standards that msps need to have to be efficient responsive frankly good when supporting their clients because if we don't have that then we're just you know we're playing with one arm tied behind our back so to speak so it those questions continued to result in unknowns and now we're getting to sit down and think about okay I think there really is new innovative ways to structure product cataloges that allow for some level of flexibility within our clients but also allow us to achieve standardization at the same time and we need to figure out how to structure those things and and that's where we're at on our journey at least right now I think it also goes back to what you said earlier when considering your clients not every industry or at least not every person who is supporting the the majority of that industry is a focused person so you consider meeting your customers where they're at but I would love to hear a success story of One path working with a customer to be able to not only solve their challenges but build a relationship that is lasted into the future um to be able to show that you're an extension of their team yeah it's a I really like by the way the use of the extension of their team really like that because I think that's a critical kind of foundational moral pillar that msps have to stand on and we remind ourselves of it all the time we're really aggressive if somebody says for example it's not rocket science or we're not saving babies here and we'll say things like wait a second you don't know if the person that's calling you is actually saving a baby right now right so treat your work with a certain level of importance from a case study perspective the client the first client that comes to mind that I think is a good litness for the type of work we do in general is actually financial services company so they're a payment processing company that buys up specialized POS venders so people who've created customized posos softwares and systems unfortunately I can't say their name but who've created customized posos systems for various Industries and so I need a POS system for my uh wedding down business or for my limo business and they find these organizations and they bring them into their ecosystem and it's a it's a really cool relationship but it's also a cool growth structure I've watched them grow substantially holy cow in the last three years the there have been moments when they were ready to leave us actually and at one point they actually did uh did give us formal notice of their departure and this is a very important climate for us and throughout that and despite formal termination notices we've maintained a healthy and strengthening relationship over time and there's really two pillars to how we've done that the first is we have a very honest conversation between us uh I'm very forthcoming with information about where challenges might be what's going well what's going not with their respective leadership and so I I peel back the proverbial curtain if you say to give them a Peak at inside the organization and we have very honest conversations and so trust has organically formed and I think this is important for everybody to understand because there's this stigma that surrounds salespeople that they're used car salesman Sharky you know manipulative this this we know the stigma we know the stereotype and I'd say the thing that differentiates really excellent sales individuals from really poor ones is that the the excellent sales individuals understand fundamentally their job is to solve problems and connect people and honesty is the only option there's there's not and I'm talking about more than telling the truth I'm talking about honesty real honesty is it's a necessary and fundamental requirement and so we have that with this client and we're very honest with each other we talk to each other about what's going on and so when they have information that they need to bring to us hey you weren't doing too well at this point in time you're really hurting us this the this stereotype or the stigma surrounding your company is not very good right now we get that information we're able to course correct and when we get in the room we actually listen to them we say okay we hear you we're going to do something about this and then we actually do something about it and they've cited that as a very big factor as to why they stay they wanted somebody who can scale we have that more than almost any other MSP has that we've really built that kind of scale capability but they want to make sure that somebody is going to learn and grow with them and so they've cited that as a very important factor is you guys aren't perfect but when we bring something up you address it honestly you address it truly and we actually get better together and we just don't know if we're going to get that somewhere else the other thing is we listen to our clients consistently in terms of building our operational Revenue just Collective road maps so we have a three- tiered system of how we engage with our clients the first is our client Executives the standard account management structure where you know we're engaged in regular conversation we're regularly meeting etc etc that's pretty common the second is that each client at One path above a certain size every client that's in our TCP or ICP has an executive sponsor so our client executives are actually empowered to bring an executive sponsor of their choosing that matches the specific needs of the clients for example if it's a client that's hyper growth focus is generally going to be very rapid in their need for additional scopes additional problems that they need to solve they're probably going to bring me if it's a very Finance oriented client they want to understand how they can manipulate numbers to their advantage they'll bring our CFO Etc and so there's a list of many Executives here that they can essentially say I want you tagged in for this call I want you tagged in for this call and that in itself brings a different level of expertise and a different level of relationship with the client and the third tier is called the voice of the customer and so we started this last year we're going to expand it over time but there is a small group of clients right now 10 that meet with me personally every quarter and we review everything from our operational road maps to our communication plans last time we had marketing come on and say what content that we produce would be valuable like how do I make content such that you want to engage with my newsletter whatever it might be and we literally evolve our entire road map strategic road map our operational road map based on the feedback comes from those three communication channels and everybody is empowered to speak honestly speak very openly and bring problems to the Forefront because our goal is to solve problems can't solve them unless you find them my conversation with Arman is only just beginning come back on Thursday for part two of our interview don't forget you can watch all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or on YouTube at Channel inssider newws and TR friends you can also listen to the audio format of all episodes on your favorite podcast listening platform want to be on the show email me at partner poov Channel insider.com once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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