Video: How To Inquire About Being Acquired With ABM Technology Group

be clear on your vision know what you want I guess if you're going to sell and you're going to make enough money to ride off into the sunset good for you then you don't have to worry about anything but if you're sticking around if if the plan is is you being part of that growth model make sure that that Vision lines up hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV I'm Katie boso and today I'm interviewing Zach Paulson director of product and strategy at ABM Technology Group an employee owned company Zach has worked in it and managed services for decades holding many titles including CEO of his former business true it which became a part of advanced business methods about two years ago today in this interview Zach reflects on the process of being Acquired and why he and his team ultimately chose to partner with a copy and print company welcome Zach hey Katie thanks for having me thanks so much for being here I've been wanting to get you on for a while this has been uh you know even metaphorically a wild ride for you for the last couple of years because you've gone through a lot of changes in your business if you just look at your LinkedIn page your titles are like there's a whole bunch going on just in the last few years so I'd like to kind of get started by going backwards a little bit like I said you're the director of product and strategy at ABM Technology Group now but there was a time when you were actually true it and I'd love love to start by talking about that business and discuss how it became a part of advanced business methods so first why don't you tell me a little bit about the original business the OG business true it what kind of solution provider were you and just talk to me about the the story and the journey that you took with that business yeah absolutely so true it was uh started January 1st 2012 and when we started it it actually was it came out of a failed merger so my business partners and I had had an IT company back in the day so I think they started 1999 I joined in 2004 became a partner in 2009 and then we had this wild idea to merge with another IT company and it was an utter disaster and so after about 15 months we realized this isn't going to work and we needed to start over and so we were kind of kicked out we were we kind of left on our own it was a combination of both nobody wanted to be there and we launched true it in 2012 and so when we launched it we launched with the idea of being a managed service provider very Cloud focused and mind you this was 2012 Cloud was not a big thing and manage services was pretty new and so uh we grew that to about 25 people we made several Acquisitions along the way we entered into a new business doing software Consulting for the dynamic Microsoft Dynamics business and then we found ourselves in July of 23 uh looking to potentially partner with an organization that had strategic customers that would line up with what we were doing and that's where ABM came in or Advanced business methods is we we sold the company July of 2023 and now I'm part of the team to continue to grow it way to be able to condense that story after I'm sure you've told it a million times I'm truly impressed that you did that so quickly so let's let's go into that a little bit more because the people that are watching are probably wondering when did you know it was time to look for a partner or a buyer in this situation that's something where I think we hear a lot about it on the opposite end and even you've had the experience of being the acquirer but it it's kind of different in in this realm so what stuck out to you is saying okay here's the wall this is the wall we're hitting here's how we know that if we were to bring in a new partner and continue our business this way we could grow from there what were you seeing that just was not progressing for you anymore yeah so our manage Service uh organization we had other business units but the manag service piece itself had reached a plateau so there's there's kind of a three to $4 million plateau in this industry a lot of people will talk about it you know getting to the millions the first one right you hit the million and you've arrived and then you kind of break through to that 3 million we weren't getting past that 3 to four million and uh we'd been that way for about seven years and so other business units had gone beyond that we uh we had purchased that software Consulting that was you know $7 million we actually had a software development organization that was about a million dollars but it was just the managed service portion wasn't progressing and so my business partners and I talked about you know what's what's the deal why is it doing this and we would make steps forward and then we' make steps back and steps forward and steps back and uh I guess I kind of came to the conclusion well we're the common denominator right the three of us are always in the equation maybe we're the problem and uh out of that really what came down to it is we needed somebody that we could saddle up against and also work through their customer base to expand our footprint we had a good reputation in our community we had a decent set of customers but to expand beyond that we were going to need to leverage someone else's client base so I looked at kind of three different opportunities I looked at like a Telco like an internet service provider and thought well maybe that would help maybe we could get local Telos because they're always looking to get into it they're always looking to do more Managed IT services and every time I I worked with them we just couldn't find the right fit we couldn't find the same ideology the way a Telco thinks is very different from a managed service provider not necessarily bad just they couldn't see the vision that I had painted the next one we looked at was accounting firms and accounting firms again uh just we couldn't get the vision aligned uh no offense to accounting people but they really look at just the numbers and so uh the numbers were the first thing we started with and that's where it ended and so as we as we kind of continue to look through that and then I came across this print company that was one of the things in my mind was print because print is also trying to enter the Managed IT space they they've got this really loyal client base they've got uh great products great Services people need them and they a lot of them are entering the technology world and so I happen to be approached by one of them that's very reputable and our area has a lot larger coverage area regionally than we did and uh we started talking and it they saw the vision we saw their vision and put it together and now we're breaking through that barrier we're breaking through that uh that $4 million Plateau which is fantastic and remind the audience for us what what area we are we talking about where are you located yeah we are in the freezing North we are in North Dakota uh we cover kind of North Dakota Western Minnesota a little bit of Montana a little bit of South Dakota so we're as far north as you can get so when we talk about local business and we talk about one that's very reputable what are we talking about in terms of the the history of advanced uh business methods in your area how long has it been around yeah so what I think is fantastic about Advanced business methods is not only do they have a great reputation but they've been around forever like they've been around 53 years and they literally sold typewriters so we are we are talking about Business Machines that go back to the original Business Machines what's cool though and we don't see this in technology very often is not only is the business 53 years old many of the employees have worked there 30 40 20 years that's very common people will sometimes be like I'm the Newbie I've only been here six years and in technology as you and I know that's not super common people to say they've been there for three years is oftentimes a long time and so that really excited me when I looked for a partner to to partner with in technology when I saw this company having a tenure like that and having a loyalty and then on top of that their employee owner so it's an employee owned organization everybody's an owner they did that I think in 2011 if I remember right and it's been fantastic I I want to skip ahead because I was going to ask about that specifically when you say that now now that you're you're a part of advanced business methods and you're now ABM Technology Group now that you have a stake in the company or your employees have a stake in the company and they have ownership of it what does that look like and also what does that mean to you as somebody who was clearly looking for a company that cares and has been around for a long time yeah it meant a lot you know like I said we we wanted a place where employees could land and have a future and in technology our future is is often times up in the air there's a lot of changes and so what I think is cool about it is now all of a sudden all of our employees they don't have to put anything into it as the company grows they just automatically Elevate so of course we do 401K we do a 401k match but then there's this side piece this employee uh stock plan that just grows and they don't have to put anything into it so I think you know it's only been about 15 months so think it's still setting in uh they haven't had their first vesting meeting where they've understood what that what those ramifications were but since 2011 that stock price has risen every year and it's not risen in a small amount it's been pretty dramatic and so this is an investment that they get to make without having to actually put anything in which is pretty fantastic it's just you continue to work you do a great job and that reward is there for you and speaking of growth you talked about wanting to grow your customer base and grow those opportunities and I should highlight that advanced business methods is a print company as you were saying they they sold typewriters at one point in time so why a print company can you review that for me why did you look at that and say this was a natural fit for then true it to become a part of because listening to this this isn't new we do know of some other managed service providers in the industry who have recently been purchased by other print companies but I'm still confused about that so can you explain why a print company and what opportunities opened up when you were acquired by ABM yeah so you know one of the misconceptions in the world is that print's dead print's not dead I mean how many stacks of papers do you have on your desk I have a ton on mine right print is not going away and what we find is that print is a very it's a very reliable product like it it it exists in every office there's not very many offices that don't have at least one printer and and many have multiple printers and it's just not going away the actual number of clicks being done maybe is going up and down maybe varies but every time the government and acts like some sort of paperless uh ordinance or whatever they're going to do usually the the the demands for print go higher but it's just it's always been there now it's not growing at a rapid clip I think the industry average is somewhere around 2 to 5% which in technology that would be a terrible number but from a reliability kind of a Steady Eddy type product it's just going to be there you look at some of the other technology products uh that go away typewriters for example as they go away something replaces them and print has always been really good at kind of having the next piece of the future so right now manage print is a big deal and so is print software you know routing the paper and and routing the different documents so what we found is it was really reliable and the customers don't turn over very often so when you buy a printer and it's many thousands of dollars a lot of times it's on a lease it's on a three-year or a fiveyear commit so these customers are not only contractually loyal but they also are pretty loyal to the company because this thing they interact with it every single day they're constantly printing they're constantly going up to it they're opening service calls the service company's doing a fantastic job keeping it running we were a natural fit to add the technology because it all rides on the network and so if we can kind of Buddy up with that I guess that works pretty well I can't help but think about we're recording this during the holiday season so obviously there's a lot of family coming in and asking what do you do and I cannot help but think about them asking like so MSP you fixed printers and now to some extent you could probably say yes and not be totally lying having some involvement with that so I can't help thinking about the running joke where it is usually associated with fix my printer and that's actually kind of interesting so one fact that maybe a lot of people don't realize is that 20% of MSP tickets are typically printer related so there's a massive efficiency by putting print and it together because not only for the customer and customer experience do they get a better response because the two companies actually like to talk to each other the two organizations but on the flip side is it also helps us as it people who can't stand printers like honestly it's one of the most hated things for most it people is is working on a printer we get to now delegate that to people that actually know these things and love these things so yes that's a great observation nice oh I love to hear that very interesting and the more I talk to you about it the more sense it it just makes so I I completely agree with you I've now understood I feel like I'm on the inside now looking out and going on from there knowing that as soon as you had access to this customer base did you immediately see where managed Services were needed as far as opportunities to be able to expand the your even your service portfolio just where did you see those opportunities and how did that start was it right away or did you need to kind of coax these clients into adding that onto their or incorporating manage services into their budget considerations yeah yeah needed yes um ready to to jump uh right away not as much so one of the challenges that we run into is a copier company can kind of sell to anybody so whether big or small so the super massive companies that have 5,000 employees in 150 locations across the US The copier company can sell to them they can also sell to the oneman operation that needs just a printer on the desk to print invoices the managed Service Company doesn't tailor to either sides of those spectrums right most managed service organizations are going to somewhere around that five to 100 user environment and so that's been one of the biggest challenges is we really have to figure out which client set fits the managed service model and then get ourselves in front of those those people you know even 15 months later we still occasionally have people go I didn't know you did it so getting the word out is big and then also getting in front of the right clients is also the other challenge there's actually only a small subset of of a client base for a PR your company that fits the manag service model so we we're trying to narrow that down figure out who they are and then of course they're all working with some sort of IT company right we're going after most of the organizations we're going after they already do it with another IT company so we have to somehow make a a case for why it makes more sense to do that with Advanced business methods is there a case in there that involves going to one business to be able to have your print and copy needs and your managed Services it needs in in the same place has that case been something that you're usually arguing when you go absolutely I think it helps when you have people that love their printer company so that that's huge they all know us and they all understand us and they all think we do a great job so that helps and then the other part is is just that efficiency we talked about is it is easier to call one number and whether the problem is a print problem or whether the problem is an IT problem you just call the number and they'll figure it out and so there's definitely efficiency there that said people love their it companies too so if they love them both it's it's going to be a bit of a challenge but overall you know there's a lot of churn in the IT industry there's a lot of change there's a lot of uh business changes that will warrant a switch and so our job is really to just let them know what we do stay in front of them and be there when they need us if somebody is watching this and they're also finding themselves in a similar situation to where you were two years ago when you were wondering where are we going from here is this do we need to find a partner are we do we need to make a change what would you suggest to them what advice would you give to them going through that process about whether it be who to look for when it comes to making that partnership and building that partnership just generally what was your experience what lessons did you learn from your experience that you would pass on to somebody else just starting out yeah I would say be clear on your vision know what you want I guess if you're going to sell and you're going to make enough money to ride off into the sun that good for you then you don't have to worry about anything but if you're sticking around if if the plan is is you being part of that growth model make sure that that Vision lines up I talked about that failed merger early on uh in our conversation and that was a lesson in what culture can do it was two different cultures that came together not necessarily good good cultures or bad cultures just very different and it fell apart very quickly ABM is the exact opposite fantastic culture and that's really what you want to look for is make sure that the cultures line up if you can do that you can work through all the problems but if you can't get past that you will never work through the problems and you'll find yourself having sold your company you'll find yourself having gotten rid of everything so to speak and stuck with nothing because it didn't work out and so what I would recommend is really look at the culture the other thing is Vision know what you want uh we wanted to grow uh I'm 43 years old I was not ready to check out I didn't make enough money to ride off into the sunset nor would I wanted to I I wanted to continue to see what we could do so make sure that the organization you line up with has the same vision everybody will say growth but you should probably clarify how because if if growth uh if the growth model doesn't line up the same way you know if they want to grow by by adding a bunch of two person offices or three person offices that might not be the right growth if they want to grow by adding thousand user offices that might not be the right growth make sure you know who you are and make sure they know who you are and that those line up amazing advice and the only other thing I would say that if those who are watching on video saying Zack is 43 whatever your moisturizing routine is please give it to us as well what Solutions or services are the most needed right now are you seeing any patterns in your customer base as far as what they're asking for yeah I think you know security is not going away right I mean we can't read a news article any time of the day that where security is not top of mind right it's always an issue so one of the challenges that that we see is is that people don't always understand what level of exposure they have so there's had to be a lot of Education just telling people what problems exist unfortunately most of our security sales are still made after a scare people get really close to having an issue and then all of a sudden they want to talk I really wish that would change I really wish we'd get to a point where people would come to us proactively so education has been a big thing that's that's been a big one we're also seeing a massive shift to the cloud it sounds kind of funny because it feels like we've been talking cloud for the last 15 years which we have but I think we are seeing more and more not only born in the cloud but completely in the cloud organizations and so just continuing to paint the picture of that being being capable and being available to what clients we serve has been a big push for us I think the understanding of what cloud is and what can be done with it and the various types of clouds are also something that people are coming into the workplace with they're coming into the workforce with it whether they be a younger generation or one uh an individual or a group of individuals who have just been like you said around the last 15 years and it's all they've been hearing and now they're building businesses built in the cloud so you're right it is still something that we're seeing a lot lot of and we've been talking about it for a long time but I think we're still seeing the popularity of it because people understand it more now so they have more questions about it my conversation with Zach is just getting started come back Tuesday for part two thanks again to Zach for joining me today and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or you can watch us on our YouTube page at youtube.com/ Chanel inssider news and Trends you can also listen to us as a podcast on your favorite podcast listening platform don't forget to like subscribe and follow wherever possible so you never miss an episode once again I'm Katie boso and I'll see you next time

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