Video: How Integris Built A National MSP Platform To Serve SMB Customers

if you can imagine an Atlanta customer that is supported by a local Atlanta office that has let's just say 50 people there's only so much knowledge those 50 people have but we have access to 600 people and those customers in Atlanta should have access to all 600 employees to be able to bring as I mentioned the right skill to that problem hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV I'm your host Katie boso and today my guest is Glenn mathys president coo and board member of Integris a national MSP platform serving 1,800 customers across more than a dozen states here in the US we discuss how the manag service provider was able to scale to where it is today what makes an MSP a true platform and how Integris helps unlock Better Business outcomes for its customers in regulated Industries like Community Banks Glenn welcome it's great to see you oh it's great to see you thanks for having me thank you so much for being here I know that you have offices all over the country providers based all over the country you yourself are in Minnesota today where you were telling me it's been negative 12 so I'm really hoping that there's some sort of like heat pumping on you right now and maybe a vitamin D lamp just to be giving you what you need because that's an intense winter experience my friend yeah yes vitamin D lamp is a good idea I'm going to put that on Amazon list to get but uh yeah we're all warm here but it's we're going through a little bit of a cold snap but we come out it we'll be back in the 40s I heard over the weekend which uh for us is a heat wave so that'll be great I cold snap more like a cold slap at that point though there's nothing about that not very Snappy no no you hit it on the head so with Integris you've got such an incredible m&a backstory and I was reading about that this morning and what I love is that you still refer to your offices where they're located as local providers and that they're really a part of a network and not necessarily a part of you know what some might call a major corporation so why don't you tell me about the backstory of Integris and how you came to be and what it is about the way that you run your company on such a wide scale and I should for our audience point out we're looking at more than 600 employees across the country and over 1,800 clients across a dozen states so really impressive statistics yeah uh 1800 managed Services customers in that we are uh we meet with them monthly work with them on a monthly basis we have probably a few more thousand that we work with in oneoff basis uh projects Professional Services type engagements but yeah 1,00 customers that we see almost on a monthly basis so yeah pretty pretty large we are National platform uh premium it manag service provider I think the key word there is premium we offer a full service experience for our customers including Managed IT services uh cyber security Serv Services uh Consulting Services cloud services and Digital Services especially around data which hopefully we'll talk a little bit more as we as we go through this conversation we focus on the upper end of the S&B sector that really does appreciate the premium and Professional Services that a company like ours is built to provide I think a key component for us is that we're vertically focused in mostly regulated or regulation adjacent Industries uh and we bring our scale and our skill and our value to all of those customers in a very standard integrous way you asked about where where we came from and how this all started in some ways it's an old company 27 years ago our founder started this business with his wife outright as he was exiting ruers University and they focus on the legal industry uh realizing there was an opportunity to sell it services to Legal customers that were really looking for a premium White Glove sort of treatment for many many years they built a lifestyle business they weren't interested in growing it much larger than sort of where they were in the Northeast new Jersey primarily in New York and for many many years they they they did that they joined a peer group in you know early 2008 2009 2010 area and that's when things started to really explode and grow for them they learned a lot in these peer groups and these peer groups are really great there's lots of msps that get together on a regular basis we're a member of evolve that's owned by connectwise it started as HTG and it's a collection of msps like size like-minded just working off benchmarks sharing ripping off and duplicating uh things each each other in a very professional way and ones that we're were're happy to share with people and they learned a lot about sales they learned a lot about other verticals they learned about a whole bunch of things as being part of that peer group and right around 2017 is when private Equity found MSP so to speak and they were approached by a few private Equity firms and they had a decision to make do they want to continue to run a lifestyle business which was doing very well or do they want to build a platform and by every measure that you want to look at eat cat you know almost every measure that you could look at the um gross margins Revenue growth Integris or at that point domain was far and above stronger than most of the competition and so Rashad who is the founder and the current CEO of our business decided that we were going to build a platform and so he did that and so around 20120 uh Integris got uh acquired by a private Equity Firm named front neack and they started their uh acquisition spree from there and so since then uh Integris has done nine Acquisitions and grown ideally identifying customers and and or m&a opportunities in specific geographies ones that we could Target and get to grow the customer base and the vertical customer base that we were looking for and did some really great Acquisitions uh through that we also acquired our our our next really big vertical which was our community banking vertical we are I would say the largest community banking vertical support MSP support organization in the country we certainly are in many many of the states where we are accredited by the uh the local organization in those States and we grew the business uh that way and so it's been an exciting Journey uh you know every day most of the people from these organizations it's the biggest business they ever run and so the last year or two we've been focused on um building out our leadership team and identifying the right leaders that need to be brought in to help mature the business people that have been from the outside and have been there done that in in the MSP space I myself came from all covered where I helped build the all covered Organization for the last 25 years running that business uh when I left and we brought in new CTO new cpos uh new CFO you know strong leaders from outside of the business that have a lot of experience in this space and so the collection of the influx of new talent and then the great talent that already existed in all of these nine Acquisitions we've been able to build a platform uh supporting the S&B space which again doesn't really exist currently in the United States there are very few platforms ourselves and maybe two others that are of size that can bring the depth and breadth of skill and scale to the SB customer base which is really underst served in many cases absolutely and I think when we talk about the it channel the SMB conversation has to go hand inand with it because that's what you're here to do you're here to serve that space that is not able to build those teams uh themselves so I do want to talk more along the lines of your customers I also want to talk along the lines of what you provide in your portfolio but something that you mentioned uh really struck me when you talked about private equity and I have two questions based around that one would be knowing that at the scale that you're operating right now at integras how do you maintain that kind of personalized local touch in every state that you are serving customers that's something where the bigger you get that that kind of can be the first thing that can fall off a bit where it starts to feel a little too large for the SNB mom and pop stores that may be may be being served or the Community Banks in this case that may be being served by Integris so how do you maintain that personal local touch still it's a great question and I would say that it's a question that's been asked for you know I've been in this business 27 years and it's been asked every year since I've been in this industry I would say that things have changed though it's not as important in the way that you phrase the question as it used to be and what I mean by that is that the small business customers today are much more sophisticated than they ever have been in the past very true um when I think about 15 years ago moving into the cloud was a scary proposition off Prem into the cloud and what did that mean the Sons and Daughters of those previous owners are now running these businesses more and more companies that we bring on as customers are born in the cloud they have no real concept of having a server on site or blinking lights in a server room it's it's not something that they understand they understand the cloud they understand security they understand the need for it there's a fear of being um attacked from a cyber security perspective so they they live in this ecosystem of Technology already they're already digital native so the sophistication of the SB users is much higher than it's ever been which means that they understand that the efficiency the quality of service that you can bring by bringing the right resource Source at the right time to the right problem or opportunity whether it's a professional service project engagement or an issue in the environment they're more interested in the quality and access to real skill that you can bring at the appropriate time to their environment and that doesn't come from just being focused on geography right and so if you can imagine an Atlanta customer that is supported by a local Atlanta office that has let's just say 50 people there's only so much knowledge those 50 people have but we have access to 600 people and those customers in Atlanta should have access to all 600 employees to be able to bring as I mentioned the right skill to that problem I think the other thing that is important that's number one number two would be you know I've always said good fences build good neighbors so I'd say that if your expectations are that Johnny down the street is going to give you his cell number and you're G to have access to Johnny all day all night which I would argue Johnny doesn't want you to have a sell number calling him all day and Johnny alone everybody yeah leave Johnny alone but uh if that's the expectation then yeah trying to do something in a more National basis you do lose intimacy but the vast majority of our customers and and Prospects that we talk to we talk to them about yes there's a local feel we have employees in every place that our customers are we're not hiring or signing up customers where we don't have employees but the assignment of the work that those employees do whether it's customer experience or whether it's Service delivery or whether it's sales may not be tied to that specific region only only and we want to tie them to the appropriate vertical the appropriate uh technology stack the appropriate uh shared Service uh and the appropriate customer at the right time so the vast majority of our Atlanta employees for example support customers outside of Atlanta but that doesn't mean that if our Atlanta customer has an issue that we can't send someone from Atlanta to them and and work with them every customer gets a dedicated vcio every customer gets access to a manag Services concierge every customer has access to the appropriate uh Technology support we have our National Health Des we have a lot of our shared services so we are able to support the customer a way that I would argue is more intimate than just providing the geography Focus you also talk about how a lot of those business owners even the ones that are are Legacy family member business owners of these these small to midsize businesses are born in the cloud they're very digitally Savvy I also would argue that in a postco world many people had to be so as we're working more from home as you have people who are operating more online where maybe they had to Pivot to e-commerce 5 years ago more than they had been doing before you're operating in a world where you are much more spread out and much more focused online uh we're much more focused on the screen in front of us look at what we're doing today uh so it's it is important to consider of of the environment in which they were raised so to speak so they are operating in a world where they're talking to many more people across different time zones and across the country nimbleness is more um and the ability to get to the right solution listen our customers want simple things right they want to be protected against all the new attacks that are out there they want access to the skill to solve their problems as quickly as possible and most importantly maybe they want a real consultative experience someone that's can sit down with them and help build a road map and connect the dots on what their technology can do you know we did a great job as an industry engineering customers off Prem on Prem from off on Prem to into the cloud but then once customers got into the cloud it was kind of a okay now what yeah and so the right msps are helping connect the dots from an ecosystem perspective and allowing and teaching um and helping our customers understand how to navigate that new ecosystem that they're in and maximize the use of it it's not just about as I said servers and blinking lights and devices and users it's about data access to data where that data stored how do you present data do you have normalized data lakes that you can use to apply automation machine learning artificial intelligence or you know some buzzword soup items that you hear a lot out there people want to know how to access those but they don't start at the place that is most important which is you first have to have normalized data you can apply any kind of AI to almost anything but if it's not structured and it's not normalized then AI is useless to you as is automation as is machine learning and so the first part that we want to you know we we're helping our customers with Beyond just the infrastructure side of a traditional MSP is helping them manage that data and then how do they use that data to sell more of themselves to provide better reporting to their own employees and customers and to be able to access information that they've never they've always had they just didn't know how to use can you give me an example of that I would love to hear about kind of that aha moment that you helped a customer see where they said we had no idea the gold that was in this data that we could use towards our business and and improving our processes was there something you could point to in which you could say this was a real success story we hang our hat on yeah so we we've we've coined a term called Chore automation so we believe that if something is a chore it should be automated so there's lots of use cases internal to the customer as well as exter external for their customers that we've been able to apply chore automation to so helping a customer with their business processes and understanding how much does a process cost you know what are the different touch points that people play in the process what is the cost of that process and how can you use technology to more effectively shift left work to automation versus a human being so a real good example that really affects almost every single one of our S&B customers is financials and so when you think about modernizing and digitizing the financial analysis the financial planning the books that you know you'd go through and sort of creating your monthly reporting and your your view of the p p&l and those types of things there's a lot of automation that you can bring to bear that we've been able to bring to bear for our customers that allows you to create this T automation task by analyzing the business processes and help them save money on how they manage their their financial um p&l and and and resources in some cases you have uh customers that have been able to cut their costs by almost a third some a little more than that uh so that's an internal use case that you've been a we've been able to help customers with and we're we're digging deeper and wider and being able to provide more automation on the financial side as say with our own customers uh it's the ability to use things like um Watson and um uh machine learning and Automation and AI things like ticketing so you have a help desk customer calls in and you have a human answer to the phone and you try to figure out what the problem is and try to address the problem with the appropriate solution many many many times most help desk around the world you find them recreating the wheel every time and and in a company like ours for example we have 600 employees if I've seen a specific M365 issue today I I've probably seen it hundred of times but the person that's answering the phone doesn't know that 99 times that's already been addressed by us somewhere else in the company today and so the ability use the type of Technology we were talking about to tell that person here are the 99 things that were done to address this problem and by the way all of them were the same resolution you can get to resolutions much faster you can identify what the problem is much quicker and you can get the customer's issue resolved much quicker so those are the types of automations and tools and and AI that we want to bring to the data like I said they all this information existed the resolution to these problems that they have existed they just didn't know how to provide that in a single paint of glass to the person trying to solve the problem for their customer and so those are the types of things that we're aiming to to solve on behalf of our customers it really depends in many cases on the customer and on the vertical the types of problems that we can address but all those can be addressed by really analyzing the business process and normalizing the data and then marrying the appropriate technology whatever it is from an AI ml or automation perspective to solving that problem you did mention Watson which is from our friends at IBM you also mentioned Microsoft in there so I I do feel this is an appropriate time to ask could you speak to the vendors that you feel are really supporting you and are there any right now whether it be through solutions that are just great or support through the channel that you feel are doing an excellent job that you would feel comfortable shouting out at the moment yeah I think Microsoft for sure I mean we're 95 if not more percent a Microsoft shop with our customers Mo most of the the customer base out there is using some type of Microsoft solution whether it's 365 or what have you so Microsoft is definitely one that we shout out to that we use a lot in in in helping us identify solutions for our customers yes Watson and other uh generative Ai and um solutions that are helping us address uh those types of things we also work with Roost and and a few other vendors that help us with automation so there's there's a plethora of of resources out there that you can use the key thing is not so much what you use on the back end but how you take what's on the back end the different vendors and partners that we we might connect with and how you create your own IP by putting those things together and build sort of the Automation and the IP that you're going to take to your own customer so that single painted glass that you can tie into your your portal and give access to customers in the future we really see more self service we see instead of calling our help desk we'll provide access to you with that knowledge that I just talked about from our normalized data with our access to those 100 incidents that we saw on that 365 issue that I mentioned earlier to the customer directly so that a customer that might have that issue can go in and put it into their art the integers knowledge base utilizing Watson utilizing Microsoft utilizing all the tools we have in the background that the customer never sees they'll be able to see their own data and be able to impact a resolution to that problem much quicker all on their own without even having to call their own help us so you start shortening the cycles of of downtime and utilizing those resources more effectively for the customer so you know we we we white label most things that we do and in in many many cases we we take a lot of tools from a lot of different areas and we bring them together and in some cases we put them together and some cases we keep them separate but to the customer it's invisible in in many ways and that's the right thing you it's what you really want to you want the to remove friction for the customer and so simplifying it without knowing all the things that are going on behind the scenes and having access to different logins to different tools and systems if we can normalize that into a very simplified approach and view makes it much simpler for the customer as well let's talk more about your customers you mentioned Community Banks why did that become a sweet spot for Integris was there a moment where you realized that hey we just have a great formula here let's lean in how did that happen yeah Community Banks uh and I would I would go a layer deeper and say Rural Community Banks are even more interesting for us I say that because there is a lack of resources available to support a lot of these Rural Community Banks yet the Regulatory Compliance that they have to adhere to is no different than US bank Wells Fargo there's a lot of Regulatory Compliance in those environments that have to be taken care of by someone that knows what they're doing that's a premium MSP and their access to those uh types of resources especially in more rural areas or towns south of big cities or north of big cities or east to west of big cities just aren't available the access to skill and scale for those is is really critical because of their Regulatory Compliance and uh their security needs their Cloud needs and the like so we love that environment we know that we can bring a tremendous of value to an environment like that regardless of their size and we know that we've been able to build the factory of support both from a CX perspective and a delivery perspective we've been able to tailor build a Rosetta Stone so to speak a language that that Community Bank understands so our people are very focused on those Community Banks I don't mix and match by Factory of support by verticals so if you're working in the vertical of Community Banks and that's what you do all day long you're not going to answer a phone for our legal vertical you're not going to answer a phone from our horizontal vertical you're going to be very much focused on speaking the Rosetta Stone of that particular vertical so they get access to Dedicated resources that understand their vertical that understand the different platforms that they use and their applications and can speak intelligently and quickly get access to knowledge that can help solve their problems and we can also very much on as I mentioned before we're not just a break fix job in fact we're not a break fix shop but we are a Consulting organization so we also spend most of our time with our clients helping them understand the road map that's available you know if there are 500 Community Banks that we support or uh a thousand eventually as we get bigger and bigger and bigger the ability for as to use all of that knowledge with those thousand Community Banks and and tailoring it in a way that you can bring knowledge to one Community Bank and say listen you're part of a community where we see these things every day I see a hundred Community Banks just like you on a regular basis here are things that we're doing over there that you we could provide value to you can't do that without having deep knowledge and a result stone that you build for that vertical so I would say that we're uniquely qualified to support that type of organization and we love the fact that there's a Regulatory Compliance component to it that we can provide value in I also am curious about how the state of certain Trends have impacted your customers and therefore impacted your business you talk about Consulting I'm sure that the term AI has probably come up in a lot of questions from your customers when it comes to the trends that we're seeing especially AI how has that been a challenge or something that you've had to overcome in really helping your customers to understand the implications of that new technology whether it be and I say again whether it be AI or something else you can point to where have you seen that you've had to really redirect or guide your customers lately in the world of just technology uh coming out yeah I think it's a great question and we get it a lot in our organization we do events across the country um and in those events we bring together customers and Prospects from those different regions and we talk about a lot of different things we talk about our responsible it architecture we talk about a whole host of things related to the technology space one of the things that comes up as you just mentioned is is AI and because it's a new to many of our customers B buzzword soup sort of terminology they're really confused by it they think they need to be utilizing it accessing it and think that it's going to provide a tremendous amount of value to them immediately or at the very least they're not sure if it could or couldn't and they need Consulting and need someone to advise and guide them the reality though is is that where they really need assistance is what I've already talked about which is let's normalize your processes and your data and let's make sure that we understand where that sits how it's being accessed what applications are connected to them uh what are you ultimately trying to present to your customers and how do we more efficiently do that utilizing things like Automation and Ai and machine learning to do that I would say AI is the third of those three things I think first is automation then it's maybe ml machine learning and then it's Ai and and our customers today are just hearing about AI all they're hearing about is AI so they immediately go to the AI I think and say how do we get this thing involved in our environment today and we the consultative side of what we do is that well no we've got to go back to the data side before you're going to get a lot more value out of understanding your your processes and you're going to get a lot more value in automating chores in your business to help you effectively manage that data in a way that now you can apply AI to it so a lot of it's education it's not that different than like I said before when Cloud came out people were like what is the cloud this big fluffy white thing in the no it's much different than what they expected it to be so the training the education the starting from square one and and kind of setting that end in mind that you want to get to is really the more important question that a lot of these customers don't know that they're asking but really are asking about and then it's okay whatever AI is available to us to help us achieve that end in mind that you have now that we have normalized data and now that we have a good understanding of your processes we've eliminated the chores through Automation and ml then you can start applying AI in really interesting ways to that kind of customer environment and if we solve it for one customer in a particular vertical then guess what I can take that IP and I can utilize it to impact every other customer that we have in that particular vertical in a very similar way because they're all asking the same question and all need the same education I think it's important to to also recognize and and really appreciate in a MSP of your size the way that you're able to kind of attack all of these challenges that are happening at different regulated Industries at different businesses of different sizes in different places across the country really aggregating that understanding of those challenges and then being prepared that much more to tackle the next one for the next thing that comes up and just iterate each time yeah I'm glad you said that because it that's the benefit of having a platform yeah and why I say that we're unique in many ways there's only a few of us that are servicing theb customer base out there and even the few of us that are at there attack the challenge a little differently for us it's how can I access that 600 people's worth of knowledge and information it's stratifying that Workforce more effectively a lot of smaller msps don't have the luxury of being able to do that they have to utilize the same Factory support for every customer that they have they can't have dedicated groups of resources to support a particular vertical because they just don't have the margins to be able to play with that and so the ability as we grow our responsibility in my opinion is to more um effectively Target the problems of particular cohorts of customers and then with our size and scale more effectively provide the right resource in those situations sometimes it's going to be in a dedicated fashion where you're speaking the same Rosetta Stone all day long and in other cases it's shared services where you're supporting those cohorts of employees that are supporting those cohorts of customers in that particular Rosetta Stone that you're able to share across you know experts that you share across so for example our our security team will support the different vertical factories uh all day long and they can speak the Rosetta Stone of each the Smart Ones that can speak almost three or four different languages but I don't need to dedicate them to a specific vertical I can have them be shared services and provide access I can also do a lot of R&D really close to the customer utilizing my size and scale where we're able to tackle problems on behalf of these different verticals uh and then pilot new Solutions new Services new technology see what works take it back to lab retweet it so our size our resources our experience our value comes from being able to effectively use the size available to US size doesn't mean everything if you it doesn't mean anything if you don't do something with it and so that's why I say from a platform perspective we want to keep that an intimacy with the customer but it geography isn't the only way to create intimacy what really is going to create intimacy is solving customer problems quickly knowing their environment having access to organized knowledge about customers and regardless of who's servicing that customer is going to feel like they've been servicing them every day from that particular geography all day long because we've been able to create this technology sphere around our employees and provide them with the best resources to service those customers now in speaking about your size I would never want to boil down into a single statement all the success all the lessons all the experiences you've had to get to where you are all the years that have gone into this but considering that when we're thinking about the msps and those who are thinking of developing a platform in the future whether it's a road mapap of years down the line is there anything that you learned along that way you as an Integris learned along the way that you would perhaps do differently or attack in a different way that you would advise those who are looking to scale their business at all uh something that they can do to make sure that they do it a little bit smoother going forward in the future I would recommend from a MSP perspective if you're a small MSP out there and you're looking to grow and you're trying to decide whether to become a platform or not I would say there a couple things you need to look at number one you can't be all things to all customers now there's you know when you're a small MSP the risk of saying yes to every different type of uh client profile is dangerous because you can't be all things to all customers it makes it very difficult for a help Des as an example in a small MSP to support five different verticals that have are on five different Technologies where they don't have a responsible it architecture where that looks the same a standard for that MSP that they uh they hold that customer um accountable to because that's you know in a relationship with a customer expectations go both ways there's like I said good fences build good neighbors so there's expectations on us to be able to service those customers effectively but there's also expectations in a good partnership on the customer where we say in order for us to service you in the best way to get to the end in mind you're looking for these are the things we're going to need you to have in place or to do and to uh acknowledge from a technology perspective that will allow us to provide the best result for you and so smaller msps tend to not focus so much on in those areas and there isn't as much of a discipline because of their size and because they can't afford to in many cases if they have the opportunity to bring on a $30,000 a month help desk only deal a lot of them will say yes to that we wouldn't because if I can't understand or own the rest of the environment then doing the help test for an environment that I don't know their server form their Cloud I'm probably just setting us us and the customer up for failure so I would say one of the most important things for um a smaller MSP is really hone in on your ICP your ideal client profile make sure you know who you want to be to what type of customer and never change you're going to be um certainly as you grow you can be opportunistic and you can add more verticals but do it in that same fashion and you'll build a business as very valuable and you'll build one that's uh that that can become more scalable so I would say that's that's probably the most important thing that that um most msps need to do when they're when they're thinking about joining a or becoming a platform and then in becoming a platform you have to um you know there's risk you have to take on right there's monies that you have to invest in the business so in many cases smaller msps have two questions to answer do they try to go down that path of building it themselves or do they look for a destination platform that's already done that and one that ties very closely to their culture because uh in our business people are the most important component we don't sell things we don't sell widgets we sell time we sell skill we sell Consulting and so taking care of your people is really really important and that's not always what you find out there in a lot of smaller msps and so finding someone that lines up to your values and lines up to your culture uh and will take care of your customers in a really meaningful way you can become a platform by joining a platform and you know being a smaller fish in a bigger Pond but certainly one that can bring a lot more value to your customers and to your employees so one thing that I would love for you to Define for me is these days I I do notice a lot of people across the industry struggle to Define platform or want to Define it in their own way is there anything you would point to in saying like this is what defines us as a platform and why that is what differentiates us from other people that may be struggling to kind of Cobble that together yeah so I would say size in the sense of g a geography in terms of how much of an area you can cover is is certainly one of the components of building a platform you know if you're in a local market um you're probably not going to build a platform MSP uh for that particular that market but I'd say geography is one component of it I would say the depth and breadth of your um Services is going to be another thing that's going to help Define what type of platform you are because that's that costs a fair amount of money to be able to build those those factories behind you that support the customers that you're looking for so the reality is you know platform comes from from from certainly size and scale um and being able to bring you know those resources to bear for your customer there isn't really A Line in the Sand that says you know at $100 million you're a platform or $50 million you're a platform or $200 million year platform it gets to the point where you have to stratify your work more effectively where you're investing in a lot of these uh things that we were talking about whether it's trying to solve AI or machine learning or whether you're wanting to bring in other uh other resources and verticals you're going to do m&as on your own uh if you're going to do your own m&a I think you're you're becoming a platform for us north of $50 million is is you're well on your way to becoming a platform and and and uh we see that out in the industry and and you have to make a decision at that point do you join a bigger one or do you try to build it up through investment you probably have to take on a partner as well because in order to become a platform m&a is going to be really critical and it's also fairly expensive and so that's where private Equity oftentimes comes into play there isn't a platform out there that isn't private Equity backed you we have a great partner in omers which is a Canadian pension fund that we're extremely excited to be a part of and so having the right uh partner behind you that helps uh you grow the business both organically and inorganically is going to be really critical and so again you as a as an MSP that's growing you have to make the decision do you want to keep going down the path of of owning yourself and rening yourself and building it that's very expensive and hard to do and unlikely to be successful uh or do you join a platform that exists or take on a partner speaking of Partners is there anything that you would advise looking for in a partner with private Equity I think that that can be a really scary couple of words right there for people that are just diving into it what would you recommend as far as how you as a business can maintain a level of control and to be able to say these are the people we want to partner with because of XYZ yeah it's not like any it's not unlike any other relationship if you're of size in a a platform that's interesting to the private Equity um world you're going to have lots of suitors and just like any other relationship that you're building whether it's your spouse or friend or what have you you know there's more art than science right what's on paper doesn't necessarily reflect uh the reality of a strong relationship and so you have to date so to speak you know before you you um you sign up with a particular private Equity Firm and you have to interview them as much as they're interviewing you on what's important to you for us it's always been about taking care of our people we want our people to participate in the the success of the business you know we want to invest in our people so as we make more money we want to invest a lot of that money back into the business this year we're implementing a new Integris University we're we're introducing new rewards and awards programs for our employees we're looking for ways to help them grow within our business whether it's in a particular part of the business like security or cloud or what whatever it might be or a particular vertical or whether it's professional development those are things that you want uh a private Equity Firm to Value as much as you do uh so that's a really critical one private Equity oftentimes gets a bad rap right there it's the vampire squid terminology that a lot of times get attached to them but the reality is there are really good ones out there that want to see you be successful and the way that you want to be successful you have to remember they they don't know how to run an MSP you do and the right ones are going to be strong Partners behind you supporting and helping you and providing resources where they can to help you grow you're only going to find that through spending a bunch of time with the ones that are out there and making the decision for yourself you you'll feel the click just like you do in building a friendship or a relationship you'll feel the click you'll feel the DNA kind of batch you'll feel the we're one of us type people just like we did with rers which is um a wonderful partner for us and we're so excited to be working with them and I think that's you know that's that's the only way to really do it there's there's obviously fund size and there's you know there's numbers that you're going to look at to determine if it's if it's a private Equity Firm that has a fund that can support your ambition but a lot of them will be able to achieve that really easily and quickly it's just a matter of finding the right fit the MSP environment is very attractive to private Equity right now if you're an attractive size organization that's looking to take on a partner you will have more than just one group to talk to and that's where you've got to dig deep and do your own due diligence talk to other Port CES that they have uh find out how they've done business with ones that have exited that are still on their portfolio there's so many different ways you can do your due diligence and they're really really important to do because at the end of the day I take responsibility I don't have 600 employees I have 600 families that I'm responsible for and it's important to me that they have a home that they can can grow within this home that we can help them even if they don't stay with Integris longterm and go off to do other things I hope we've set them up for great success moving forward what's next for Integris in 2025 what plans can you speak to so I would say the the first evolution of Integris was doing those nine Acquisitions building scale and then the second phase integ 2.0 so to speak was all about maximizing and standardizing the the integrous way moving forward right when you have nine different companies coming together what you want to be able to exit from that is a one way of of a one integrous moving forward and so we built the scale and then we spent some time and still are in many ways refining side of what that integrous way moving forward is going to be and continue to be and then the third leg is going to be a combination of growing uh the traditional MSP business but also recognizing that a lot of the MSP world that we're used to is very infrastructure focused and in many cases becoming more and more commoditized right when you think about the typical MSP historically has sold remediation help desk Cloud security probably more defensive security than anything else we being honest and they provide Consulting for their small business customer in the future I think you're going to have to continue to do that that becomes more like dial tone you now need to focus more on the things we've been talking a lot about the data the digital state of the customer how do they access that data what applications do they access that data with should we partner with specific application companies out there to help bring more resources to these comp companies through the use of applications and and software there's going to be the better security of that data where that data sits from a cloud perspective uh and then it's access to data it's now reporting on data think business intelligence and think you know now that you have this data Lake of resources how do you manage that data more effectively and present it to customers and then you get into the things we've already spent a lot of time talking about which is how do you then automate and make that more efficient and how do you provide knowledge on that data and access to that data to the customer and machine learning and then AI to it you become more efficient with how you utilize that data uh to the benefit of your own customer I think that's the world we're we're delving deeper into right now so we're going to continue to grow organically you know we're very much focused on 10 10 to 15% net organic growth through a lot of different programs that we have in the business we're going to deepen and widen our skill base and our factories of support for the various verticals we're opportunistic about some other verticles we really like the healthcare space and we're we're thinking about that we're digging deeper and wider into cmmc regulated manufacturing we love the regulated space out there for SMB customers and so we're going to be digging deeper and wider into those areas we'll do a lot of Acquisitions ideally in some of those verticals uh and then we'll do probably some strategic Acquisitions as well where we acquire maybe more data skill set where we acquire um machine learning organization or something that will help us build more automation so there's going to be a lot of um of growth for us in the future that's now tied to a standard that we have and our standard involves as as I said utilizing those 600 people in a more meaningful way to every one of the 1,00 managed Services customers that we have in the language of the vertical that they speak so a lot of complexity but a lot of fun you know we're also very excited to keep continue to help our employees grow give them more opportunities as we become a bigger business there's way more opportunities for people to specialize in certain things in a smaller MSP you have to wear a lot of different hats and you know in the morning because you're available you might wake up and have to go install a desktop in the afternoon you might get to work on a virtualization project but every day is not really dependent on what your skill is it's going to be more often dependent on your availability in our world you know we're really really focusing people on those specific Rosetta Stones we want them to learn so if you want to be doing security then and you're good at it then we're going to have you do security all day long I don't want you installing desktops or laptops or you know things that are taking away from the thing that you're really good at and you really want to do so we take the hats off the employees we leave one on and then give them opportunity to grow into other Technologies as well if they so desire uh so that's really going to be our focus is we build integras 3.0 and we grow into even a larger platform in this space uh for our small business customer but that's the the key thing is we're not going to lose sight of who our customer is we've never lost sight that we're looking for the premium upper end of the SMB lower end of the mid-market customer that really wants us to own the strategy that allows us to come in and drive the strategy for that business and they can bring all of these different tools that we have access to to the benefit of that particular customer well for those SMB potential customers and regulated Industries who are listening out there where can they go to learn more about Integris Well you certainly can go to Integris it.com uh we've got a lot of different resources there in a vertical setting as well so you can sort of look up what's most interesting for you and where you come from we've got a lot of uh information on our socials um we're constantly spending time talking about the different verticals and going deeper and wider we do case studies you look for events from us we're certainly going to be out there where you can come spend some time with us and learn a little bit more about all of these different things that we've been talking about and we'd love to chat with you so you know certainly go to Integris it.com and there's ways for you to connect with us there and we'd love to chat with you more Glenn thank you so much for your time today it's been such a pleasure speaking with you it's been great chatting with you as well thank you for having me it's been a wonderful experience thank you so much to Glenn for joining me today and thanks to you for watching or listening you can check out every episode of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch us on YouTube at youtube.com/ Chanel inssider newws and Trends you can also listen to us as a podcast wherever you get your podcast from don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode come connect with us on LinkedIn or X at Channel Insider or with me at Katie boso once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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