Hey channel insiders, welcome back to channel insider partner POV. I'm your host Katie Bavoso and my guests today come from the IT services and consulting company Kite Technology Group. You'll meet Adam Atwell, chief technology officer, Microsoft MVP and partner, and Jason Goel, chief solutions officer and partner as well. This episode is all about the nuances that come with serving independent insurance agencies and how the Kite team prioritizes a go-giver approach to education and information, not only for their clients, but other MSPs as well.
Plus, it's not an episode without talking about AI. But how do you guide clients in such a regulated industry through that journey? We dig into it. Welcome, gentlemen, and thank you so much for joining me. >> Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having us. Thanks for finally getting us on. >> I'm very excited for you to be here, sir. Yes, I know this has been a long time coming. So, thanks for your patience. And I hope you're ready. You You be careful what you wish for, Adam. >> We're ready.
We're ready. We're We're so excited. Seriously. >> Well, I am too. And that's where I want to get started is really getting to know the two of you and getting to know Kite Technology Group. So, first of all, I I know your background quite a bit now through my own research, through talking with you. You have a special vertical niche where you really focus on independent insurance agencies. You do have other customers in nonprofit construction, things like that too, but your bread and butter is really right there in insurance, which is a regulated industry.
So, can you give me an overview of your business and why you focus very much on that specific vertical? >> It kind of started with a hold my beer moment. We ran into a couple of insurance agencies back in the early 2000s. There was a an insurance specific product and terminal servers were you know the new hotness. Everybody wanted to have a terminal server in their business but this product didn't work. So our founder Jeff Kite ironically who doesn't drink said I think I can solve this.
So we managed to get the product working. Um gained a lot of recognition you know not only from the vendor but also from the space. So we kind of accidentally fell into it where now we had insurance agencies coming out of the woodwork saying hey I hear you guys are the you the ones to talk about doing this thing. So that's kind of how we we started and it's always been from a position of people helping people. You know, we love technology. We love people.
We love just makes sense that we would help people with their technology. And we found a lot of overlap in that business. Insurance is a relationship business. It's built on trust. It's built on value. And you know, we just kind of fell in love with it. It just made sense to us. Um so we dove in and that's where we stayed. And something I want to make sure that I highlight because I I think it's important for the audience to understand of just how deep this goes for Kite Technology Group.
Jason, you're a licensed insurance agent and I want to be specific in in the kind that you are. You're a licensed property and casualty insurance agent. So, not only are you serving this sector, but you've lived it, you've been inside of it. Are you one of one at the company or are there more like you working directly with these customers that are still working in these insurance agencies? >> There are quite a few. Some of them come from an insurance agency background and and perhaps they were never licensed to sell insurance and you know they just knew the business operations.
But uh our director of operations, he's a former commercial lines account executive working with janitors and contractors. So top to bottom, inside out, we we know the business. We know what it looks like to show up to work at 8 or 9:00 in the morning on an insurance desk and and do the job. >> One other specific aspect of our business, Katie, uh that, you know, kind of we doubled down on our investment. Jason gave the backstory to kind of where we came from and we have staff that fell into technical roles in our organization to help serve our, you know, primary customer of independent insurance agents.
But more than that, about five or so years ago, we realized not only do we like people, we like technology, we like this insurance thing, but we also realized that we had some internal value to some specific line of business applications inside of the insurance agency world. And so we we started to stand up what we call agency consulting. And so it's a whole another division in our company that's fundamentally dedicated to helping folks use insurance applications better with a focus in a in a specific vendor.
But we have eight or nine folks on our team now and their primary job is to help our customers, our agencies do better with their agency management system, workflows and processes and those things as well as accounting functions and general maintenance of the agency management system. So that's another aspect of our business that uh kind of an outgrowth that's became and and continues to be you know a major investment what we're making in our team and the industry at large. >> Let's talk more about that investment and and that knowledge that you have that runs so deep.
What are some of the biggest technology challenges facing independent insurance agencies today? Obviously, I know that this is probably a business that security and compliance paramount, top of mind at all times, but is that some of the only technology we're we're focused on here. What what else what other challenges are they facing when it comes to their tech stack that impacts their business? I'll start out with kind of the first challenge that still continues to be a challenge today and it's not a specific technology per se like security or compliance or access to collaboration tools but it's just the modern work aspect of things and so when I say modern work that's an industry term for remote work right that is synonymous with Microsoft technology so the business in general insurance and and other regulated industries really are challenged by meeting those regulations in a hybrid workforce, folks that work from home and work in the office or somewhere in between, right?
And so that challenge, I don't want to understate it. I I want to highlight the fact that remote work is still very much a challenge that is very real for all businesses and uh independent insurance alike. And so that that's a major aspect. And maybe some see that as a COVID trend that's since settled out, but really it's going through another cycle of folks coming back to the workplace or having a few days at home. And how do you find that balance of maintaining not just security and compliance as paramount to the list, but also collaboration and communication and making sure you're invested in your culture and the way you work together and serve your customers.
So that that's top of mind for me, the the challenge of the ongoing challenge of remote work. Well, it it does have the challenge of not being a not being a super interesting career choice. Like you don't you don't go to a high school and say, "What do you guys plan on doing when you get out of school?" Insurance. Like it just just doesn't work that way. There are some security challenges. Um insurance as a concept is regulated at the state level for the most part.
So every state's got its own licensing. Every state's got its own security requirements. You do get some that are, you know, at the federal level, FDC safeguards as an example. But, you know, as an agent sitting at a desk managing licensing, um, managing all the regulations, what New York demands of me, what Ohio demands of me, what Michigan demands of me. I have to keep all of that top of mind, which is not what I planned on doing when I started the business of selling insurance.
This is all, you know, necessary work that has to happen while serving the customer. And the insurance agent kind of sits in the in the middle of the road. You've got, you know, the customers on one side. Um, but you've got multiple insurance carriers that actually produce the product. So, you have a house, you need a homeowners policy. It's my job to find you, you know, the best coverage, the best deal, which means I need to coordinate with several different insurance carriers and their products.
They don't always have a compelling reason to play nice together. So I'm working in the middle of a bunch of silos and monolithic systems having to synthesize that down to my desk, evaluate all the options and then present it to you in a way that makes sense so that we can you know align on a product. So it's it's a fascinating workload with with a lot of specific and unique challenges. I'm curious to know, Jason, obviously I mentioned it before, security and compliance for these agencies is very important.
I've spoken to other partners in the past where security and compliance for maybe their retail chain, maybe a different vertical they're focused on outside of being a regulated industry. It's kind of a it's kind of a like you you got to tough love those clients. You need them to understand how important it is to have not only the cyber security aspect but handinhand with the compliance aspect. I don't imagine it's difficult like that uh with your customers to explain of how paramount it is but are you noticing a shift in these agencies asking for more or asking you to be proactive with the compliance needs that they're going to not only have maybe this year but maybe if they're trying to futureroof or build another agency in a different state. what do we need to do to focus on that?
How do you help them walk through that journey? >> Sometimes kicking and screaming would be >> really. >> So, when you think of insurance, um, they're kind of the redheaded stepchild of the financial services environment. So, the insurance agent gets lumped in with banks and insurance carriers and and sellers of financial products and wealth management. So from a legal perspective, when we when we talk about what a bank needs to do and what we talk about, you know, an insurance carrier like Chub or Travelers has to do, we're also thinking in terms of, oh, by the way, insurance agent, you're on board, too.
So the policies, the requirements, they were written not with the agent in mind. Um, they're just an innocent bystander in this. So there there's a lot of disconnect between understanding, you know, what is what is my job as a as a small business owner relative to these organizations and number one, how do we implement it? How do we afford it? These are financial services things that are coming down that they've they've not experienced before. >> So when uh when New York produced its first round of regulations, it was, you know, first of its kind as they called it. and and these were industry, enterprisegrade terms and requirements that were being put on small businesses.
You know, you must have a SIM, you must have a sock, you must have vulnerability management, penetration testing. So, the first thing we had to do was okay, well, let me let me help you understand what all these things mean because you suddenly just grew up and now you got to behave like an enterprise. So, we've got to we've got to adopt some mindset things. We got to adopt some tools and some processes that we haven't seen before. And it's not it's not always about security.
Security and compliance kind of walk the same road, but you can be secure and not compliant. And you can be compliant and not secure. So that was that was the challenge is like, well, we are secure. We've never had a breach. You guys do a great job as our IT provider. We're secure, right? It's like secure, but maybe not compliant. Compliance is a mindset and a workload and all that stuff. So, a lot goes into the conversations more than anything. It's not it's not so much about the tools.
We focus heavily on the Microsoft 365 stack and Microsoft does a very good job of giving us a lot of levers that we can pull. That's why we love the product so much. Being secure is very simple, but adopting the mindset that gets you to a point of compliance is a is a real challenge. That one is very human as opposed to techcentric as opposed to productentric. >> Yeah. Humans, workflows, conversations. You know, we know stuff's going to hit the fan.
What does that look like? That's that is now our job to understand compliance is understand what do we do? What are our obligations? Who gets the first phone call? Who gets the second phone call? What do we tell the customers? What are we obligated to tell them? it it's a lot of lot of nuance and and complexity before we even get to the conversation of technology. >> For sure. I was just going to add a few specific things. You know, for us in our journey, it wasn't always as easy as it is today to help, you know, convince our customers of the the importance in these things, right?
Katie, you alluded to your customers are they know this stuff, right? Like it's good. It's not a hard conversation. And Jason said, you know, sometimes we got to drag them along kicking and and screaming. The reality there was a shift definitely when security became more of a focal point for the industry. And then it was like, well, hey, you know, we're just delivering more bad news kind of thing to the customers, right? It's not us, you know, we we realized there was a tone shift there that we were able to adopt based on compliance and regulation coming down.
And so that's been in large part really a good rhythm for us as a business. We pay attention to compliance requirements for the industry so our customers don't have to. They value and appreciate that when it comes time to the cycles of annual review for you risk assessments which every business must do. We help them understand that they're checking the right boxes where they're not, what investments to make. And that's really been a quarter a cornerstone in really our priorities as a business, you know, as we've grown around the Microsoft 365 space and the insurance space is really growing with it with both, right?
And so um largely you know to the point of security versus compliance we knew the needful of security customers would get we needed to help them understand that we did all those investments in those conversations most of them get it now we're running into the second wave of security requirements which are more dollars and more why do I need to do this what's the value but we like to think of compliance as the second coming of security from a regulation and industry standpoint I think a few years back I said what you know what security was 5 years ago will be what compliance is in the next year or two from a regulation focus right and we're already starting to see some of that come to fruition with like Jason said the last year round of changes from New York and other regulatory bodies that lead the charge and so it's it's been fun it keeps a lot of job security up for us in in value we can add to our customers but I think one thing that stands out for us is because we come at the customers as a trusted advisor and a partner and a real industry expert.
When we come to them with these kinds of things, there's an assumption of trust in what we're saying. And so that in the relational investments we've made with all of our customers really helps the conversation happen better. And so that that gives us the ability to partner with them and help them see that value rather than it being sorry, it's just an upsell to something else. you don't understand the value in or care to pay for. That's a a much nicer conversation to have today than it was 10 years ago.
For sure. >> And now when we talk about your clients, are we saying countrywide or a specific uh are there any states I think the easier answer would be, are there any states that you can't serve or or don't serve? Where are your clients basically around the country? >> Everywhere. >> Everywhere. Okay. >> Yeah, they're everywhere. We're US-based. um and in our client and our and our staff. Um so we don't serve outside of the US and we don't have any folks that are employed outside of the US for our company.
You know, we we've talked about representing our clients on the map, but the reality of um the fact that we probably don't have a client in every state, Katie, but I would say that the United States of America in what insurance policies are our clients right represent the whole United States to some degree. And maybe the exception would be Puerto Rico and how it's recognized or maybe Hawaii because it's just offshore and I'm not sure if we're actually writing policies for Hawaii today by way of our customers.
But I think we have a pretty large uh representation of the United States and the regulatory weight that comes with it for independent agencies and us being mindful to it its process. I want to pivot to what was mentioned earlier about Microsoft 365 that the company is very much invested as a Microsoft partner and Adam obviously your title Microsoft MVP that holds a lot of weight. How does one achieve a title like that number one and number two what does that say about what does that say about Kite Technology Group?
What should it say to your customers? >> Yeah, I love that question Katie. Um, I think there's several different perspectives for that answer. Um, I'll give the one that's closest to I think our heart and our intention. We started down the road of aligning with Microsoft early on before I even came to the business, right? It was the server on prem that Jason talked about, terminal servers, the small business server, Microsoft tech stack, but the on-prem version, right?
And so I came in when about 13 years ago. LinkedIn told me the other day. And uh you know when I came it was really just starting off what we know as office 365. So hosted email, hosted exchange and then a little bit of one drive on the side if you will. And really everything else was up and coming sharepoint etc. The things we all use mostly every day right that we call table stakes really. Um for us we knew Microsoft was where we were heading that those were our investments and so early on um our business has been a part of peer groups right so other MSPs for years our uh founder and our managing partner felt that that was very important to our business and so we aligned in those peer groups and kind of you know brain trust go-giver mentality of sharing things and we got to a point where we saw the industry shift from onrem to SAS right in that jump start to come.
And so I was fortunate enough to have some opportunities to invest in the channel like with some Microsoft events and kind of see the vision of the road ahead. And so I I kind of brought that in and then started to really do work inside other MVPs at the time as well as other um folks that were likeminded with goals of I want to help serve SMBs that serve Microsoft customers, right? And so that really that's what we are. That's the heart of our business is we're we're a small business that serves other small and midsize businesses.
And so organically through those peerroup connections and other channel relationships that we were building, I was given an opportunity to be a part of the Microsoft 365 Lighthouse community, which early on was really just kind of an attempt for Microsoft to serve multi-tenant needs for MSPs or other small businesses that serve more than one Microsoft environment, right? And so I put a lot of time into that relationship of the community and investing there.
And that was really uh in service of our business, our customers and our peers, right? How do we do multi-tenant Microsoft 365 well? And so uh along the way there was another opportunity for what we know today as defender for business, which is the cornerstone to the device endpoint security product in in the Microsoft 365 suite. and they took kind of the enterprise endpoint offering and put it in a small business package and re rebuilt it. We got to work under NDA with Microsoft on that for two years prior to its official Ignite announcement.
And so as that time of both Lighthouse and Defender for Business, I had made like 300 hours of investment because we track our time over here doing it while accelerating our cloud growth, you know, killing off servers and moving to Microsoft 365. And the product manager that I worked with from the Defender for Business side said, "All right, I've checked my boxes. I'm moving on to the next project." And I kind of just said to him, "Shalom, would you be willing to nominate me for a Microsoft MVP?
Do you think I fit the bill? Do I check the boxes? And really, we had some other business goals. This was really like a side thing. I really didn't know what it meant, honestly. But I wanted to pursue it out of one my passion for the industry and really our core values we have as a business, which are really just an extension of my own values truly, and wanting to contribute, right? And I we're we're pretty loud over here. we can be. I'm probably the loudest, but we're fortunate enough to see things for SMB that are gaps and and that's really what I do in the relationships with our strategic technical partners.
And so Shalomi put my app in for me. He he nominated me and after about 90 days, you know, we we found out that I got awarded. And so that for me was awesome accomplishment from a professional standpoint. Um, it affirmed the work we were doing in the industry of trying to make SMB better, right, from a Microsoft perspective. And then really, I think some of the side benefits were it gave us more access, right, to to folks in proximity with the work that was being done.
Microsoft sees SMB differently than than enterprise, as you might imagine. Um, but we've been really fortunate to be able to align with close ISV or industry partners that are aligning with Microsoft and Microsoft alike. And so, um, that that's kind of what it is. It I think that the core of what it means to me is it gives me an opportunity to work with the channel and the industry at large and add the value of what I see specifically for SMB and MSPs back to it.
And then I think the return value or the value exchange is the insights we get for what's coming and how to build better and next steps for our customers and our people, you know, our our actual staff and stuff. So, what' I miss there, Jason? Anything? >> I'm not sure there's a whole word that you missed in the English language there, >> if you're being honest. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Beautifully said, Adam. And there is one phrase you said that I do want to touch on in there because it it is going back to your core values and tenants as a company.
You take a different approach to growth and what you call the go-giver mentality and you said it earlier in in your statement there. Talk to me more about what that is and what do you mean that's your approach to growth? How does that differentiate Kite Technology Group to really focus on education and that go-giver mentality? >> Yeah, I love that. So, I'm not going to do the book justice. I can't even tell you the name of the author right now, but it's one of many books that we've read over the years here in in leadership.
And our core values are so important to us as a business, right? And that goes top to bottom in our organization. It's rare that you see that. Um, we're people who care deeply about people. And specifically what the go- philosophy is is for me it's to give without expectation to try to make something better to make an impact just because for no specific reason other than to gift it, to give it away. And so that's really um what we do, right? And I I get the privilege to do it on the technical side which is one of my passions and I love that opportunity.
We Jason leads a lot of this charge and I I kind of come along with him from an industry standpoint and he could speak to kind of that go-giver mentality for insurance, right? because we do it in both places and then we do it internally as well for for our staff, you know, in every way that we can. Um to give without expectation and and that has served us really well like just try to represent the right things, call them out, call people up and get give it away with the intention of something getting better, not expecting a return.
In a prior call that we had, a prior call to this recording, Adam, you had also mentioned that you try to take that mentality to other MSPs, which was surprising to me. Why do that? Why? Because you could easily see that as, you know, helping your competition, but why take that mentality to them as well? And how does that help you? >> Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, we're entrepreneurs at heart, and we don't we don't make any excuse about that. we're people who are entrepreneurs at heart, but there's a healthy tension in being an entrepreneur and a people person, you know, at the same time.
And so, as a as that applies to our peers, right, other MSPs, we found through the years of peer group effort we've put in, you know, the peer the core peers that we've sat alongside, we've learned and we've been on the receiving end of receiving the value of what others have shared. So, we saw that example, right, in those ways as a business. And then several of us have hearts for giving anyway. That's just who we are. Community, family, friends, whatever it is.
And so it's important to us because we know there's more than enough work out there for everyone. Katie, honestly, that's that's one statement. So we're not really worried about, well, what am I giving Katie if I give her my crib sheet? You know, is she going to come in and build something better? If you do, that's great. I hope it will drive better for all of us, right? That's kind of the mentality we have. The work's never going to stop. It's going to change.
It's going to grow. And we know that confidently we're going to stay on top of that change as long as we're invested in the same things. And so, anything that we can give away and help grow the community at large in that way, we're going to keep doing for those reasons. >> Well, gentlemen, I think we set a record here because we've been talking for about half an hour and nobody has mentioned AI yet, but I'm about to to end that streak right now. So AI, artificial intelligence, obviously it is the tool that everyone is after right now trying to figure out how can we build it into our workflows?
How can we make money off of it? I as a consumer don't really understand how that can be applied to independent insurance agencies just from where I sit. So Jason, how is that something that's being applied and how are you guiding your clients down the road of making the smart, safe decisions when it comes to artificial intelligence? Because we all know what happens when you just dump everything into an LLM. >> Oh yes. So it it's a crowded space, you know, everybody's got a tool or or a thing.
So we're we're leading the same way we've led with everything else, which is education and guidance. That's that was our first entrance into the field is let's not try and sell you a tool. Let's not try and sell you a product or a service. Let's take a hard look at what this thing is doing to our industry. Um what it's going to do to our processes and and really starting with a process of of thinking through it, separating fact by from fiction. Our primary goal is to kind of get you unexcited about AI.
Step away from the shiny object. Don't go head over heels. Don't go all that. And then let's once we think we understand it, we know the risks. We we know the rewards. Now, let's look into the business and find the opportunities. So, that's where we're leading with that education and leading with that industry. There are a ton of tools out there. There are a ton of vendors knowing the good from the bad, knowing the smoke from the fire. That's our second step in our in our foray into the into the industry is is just reaching down with the vendors, scheduling meetings, talking, learning their products, and really understanding how they're doing so that we can come back to our agency partners and and say, "Don't don't waste your time with these guys.
These guys worth worth an introduction." So, again, not not selling a a product. I don't I don't want to make money just for the sake of making money. I want to do this right and do it well. And um so this this quarter has been an an internal shift where we start to explore okay AI is a pretty established thing now. We've we've seen a season of early adopters rise and fall. We've seen a series of vendors rise and fall and we've we've seen that first round of you know the big fish gobbling up the little fish.
So now what's left? What hasn't been commoditized? What hasn't been there? Now, what can we spend the time and the and the effort for making a specific workflow or or a specific product that works for an agency? And that that's what we're looking at at this corner. So, I say from the outside looking in, you you might kind of see us as as a lagard in the space, but we're doing it on purpose because we don't want to we don't want to just make money.
We just don't want to make make a product. And if there's a vendor that's going to do it better with a laser focus on solving a very specific problem, I don't want to get in the way of that. I want to bridge that relationship and make sure that that happens for the benefit of my customers. In the same way that, you know, we're not afraid to educate other MSPs on a better way to do things if if we think we have some some value to give, we built our business just just leading with a willingness to educate and help.
So we we know that model works. Sounds a little weird, feels a little weird in practice, but we know it worked to get us where we are. And and we still think that's the play for the future. So So when it comes to AI, just about everything I've I've done so far is is really in the education space. Industries, the big eye, independent agents and brokers is a national organization. I'm actually going out to Nashville attending their conference and and helping them think about what AI is doing in the educator space and what do they need to have their eyes on so that they can better serve their members.
And that that's a lot of what we've been doing is just helping and talking and educating and helping people get to a point to make informed decisions. And at some point we will be one of those informed decisions when we land on something that's that's really worthwhile and really meaningful. But along that way we will have established trust. We will have established you know an authority in the space and education in the space and and then we will I hope I think I believe we will be the foregone conclusion when we say okay guys we've we've got the thing we need to do here.
Let's go forward. I'm curious to know if there are any trends that you're implementing right now that maybe are not the shiny object that AI is, but is there anything out there that you've been really saying this actually might be a good idea to recommend to certain clients? Anything like that or are you still trying to keep it pulled back? There are some um when when I think through AI and and what it's going to do to the business, the the position I don't want us to be in is a point solution.
I don't want to sell X and sell Y. You know, we've always taken the big picture strategy view. So, where we're thinking about things is is not so much AI, but but what's AI going to interact with? And do you have that thing? A lot of agencies don't. They're using a line of business app that was built and it's been refreshed over the years, but you know, it was it was built for a legacy workflow and a legacy workforce. So, what is the AI going to interact with if you don't have a CRM?
If you don't have a ticketing system, if you don't have a process to manage work that outsources or automates, it's about building that system first so the AI has a home when it comes into your business. And that's the part that a lot of folks are missing. They they jumped right over that and they automated and they brought a tool in which is which is cool. Sometimes it works really well and you're saving some time and things like that, but are you really foundationally changing your business to a point where it can scale um not yet because you're still working on the point solutions and that's that's our goal.
And I think we when we step in just like we've always done, you know, we're going to step in with the b business strategy and the goal in mind and then the path to get us there. All the products won't be ours. Um, some of them certainly will be at some point. >> Adam, I'd love to hear your take when it comes to the AI conversation. Is there anything you'd like to add? >> For sure. Yeah, I think it probably took us about a year of figuring out how to approach the position of our AI strategy.
Much like Jason said, for the independent agency that we serve primarily, right, there there's a lot of things happening just like there is everywhere with AI. This quarter, we really honed in on kind of a three-prong strategy that we've started to execute on. One is the customer needs, right? And that's largely what Jason focuses on from an industry perspective. Last quarter, we started using AI and automation for how we do our service on our help desk team and other areas of our business.
Some would say it's just automation, but it's automation with the level of AI built in and in the flow of where we work. And so that's a second dimension. It's not really specific to what our customers see, but they certainly see the result in the quality of work we do or the capacity of work we provide and are able to accomplish. Right? So that's take two re really was take one, you know, AI from a service management perspective. Take two is has been, you know, the industry focus.
And then the the third take is really how it all fits together around each other. And so that point of you know agent to agent or systems that talk between systems you know the ground is just starting to settle on some of those things. Um, I think one part of our a AI strategy that's undeniable is the Microsoft 365 co-pilot piece, right? We know like Jason said that it's going to take multiple pieces of AI to wrap in and add value for total business, you know, continuity, but we know what value Copilot has.
And really for our customers because they're Microsoft shop first, you know, while what they do in the Microsoft world doesn't directly extend always to their agency management system while where they serve their customers, we know Copilot has so much data for internal work that we do and what we store there. And so it would be a miss, a major miss if we didn't call out C-Pilot. And uh that that's another investment we're making here. um of course you know in the Microsoft world and so first take on that is really a further level of adoption in our business right because it was built for enterprise first and then packaged down for SMB opportunity the next step for us is delving into custom agents right that we build to get help give our people better ways to do things internally um and then at the same time we're also establishing good security and compliance u measures around how to use co-pilot in the right way and we'll be paying that guidance forward to our customers in the months to come.
A note on a different direction of AI that we're taking and I think all MSPs or SMBs alike need to understand there is a multi-pronged approach to AI and not assume that one tool will solve them all. >> Very well put right there. There is no silver bullet and I think that's important to always remember about anything new on the market even after the few years we've had to kind of experiment with AI. So, I'd love to know a success story with a customer that you can tell me, which is one that really shows the value your business provides to them.
Is there one that comes to mind? >> There are two that come to mind. >> Oh, even better. >> And I'll take it one from a human level and and I'll take one from from a business level because both are truly equally important to to how we do things. So, I'll start with I'll start with the success story on the personal level. Happened on our help desk. Um, we had a relatively new client. They work from all over the place. A lot of work from home, a lot of stuff.
So, so they're not really in an office environment. One of their employees called in with a technical problem and uh was working with one of our technicians and um the call wasn't going well. The caller was was having trouble understanding the words, was having trouble following the directions, you know, all this stuff. and um um Beth, our our employee, kind of leaned in, worked it through, and and realized this is this is a medical emergency. This is something that's going on here.
So, she gets off the phone, she calls the HR, she's calling anybody in the business she can get her hands on who would be in a position and say, "Hey, I just just got off the phone with soand so and this is how it's going. I think we have a problem." And and sure enough, it was a medical emergency. They got, you know, they got the ambulance out there, got the woman taken well cared for. It was a really good success story and a shining example of of what of what we do and what we value.
I suspect they're probably going to be customers for life as a result of that. But the I mean the whole point is there's there's life there to be a customer now because our employee put the people first and took the humans first and that's that's all she was worried about not getting the monitor working. So that was super affirming to to hear that our folks are just they're just out there being good people first and foremost which is awesome. >> Beth, you rock.
Shout out to Beth. Oh my goodness. >> Shout out to Beth. >> Yeah, that was fantastic. So, a good success story for you from the from the business side of the fence. There's a lot of acquisition, private equity firms coming in and buying up a lot of independent insurance agencies and and we see it a lot. I had one of our long-term clients came to us in, you know, in a level of confidentiality saying, "Hey, we're we're thinking about we're thinking about doing this and we're thinking about partnering with this particular acquirer. you know, what's the deal here?
What are what are we signing up for? What is it actually going to look like on the other end? And so, we were able to to walk them through, you know, here are the questions you need to ask. Here's what you need to be aware of. I mean, the long story short, they seem to be a really good partner in our experience and what we're seeing. So, um I think you've chosen a good one, but it is going to change your business. It is going to have some impact.
And um you know there were a series of of conversations along the way, but it was really about the emotional impact of you know, hey, we're we're selling our business here and and are we doing right by our employees? Are we making good choices and and selecting a good partner? So it was cool to be able to see it, you know, happen at the, you know, at the legacy level of, you know, this is not this is not a business decision. This is, you know, dozens and dozens of people and and their lives are about to be impacted and and we've got a a role and a responsibility to to serve that well and and treat it with honor.
So, it's it's awesome that our position in the insurance vertical is is well earned and well respected that we can we can kind of help in there which is great. >> I love those stories. I think so often in IT we forget about the actual people behind the business on both sides on the customer side and the partner side and I often think about what we do leads back to the betterment of those people ultimately and it's important that we remember that.
So I love that conversation about one saving a life and then two being able to be realistic about what a company should expect when their employees lives are going to be upended to a certain extent and how do we minimize that damage. So Katie, I have uh a bit of a technical success story from a customer perspective. Maybe that's boring because we're, you know, we're in tech shop and whatever. Um but we kind of had two two sides of the technical pieces of the the services we offer.
One of course is, you know, what we call managed services. So you pay us monthly dollars, we do your tech stuff, right? We also started doing this thing called technical consulting some years ago. And it was really an opportunity for us to pull me out of the business and see if we could add value in a different way. And so I was kind of on an island and I had a you know a handful of technical consulting customers. Largely they were paid projects because they had internal staff you know or other MSPs even that were doing what they needed and they needed some M365 experience.
Some of it was literally like how do I manage my internal IT department and how how can you add some of that? So we had a varying size and scale in the technical consulting clients that we were working with. One of them was a client of about 150 users um an insurance agency in Pennsylvania. I won't say their name but we were doing uh helping them with kind of their their first steps in from onrem servers right to adopting Microsoft 365. It was like on the brink of an email exchange server migration, right?
And so, uh, I had been in a technical consulting, you know, project engagement with their staff at the time they had two staff in their team and, uh, we had been working along. We kind of got the plan together for them and then, um, up out of nowhere, it kind of went on pause and we were like, "Okay, no big deal. We'll come back to this in 6 weeks or whatever." And then before that time, Horizon had came, we got an email, myself and our our founder, Jeff Kite, and it was from the president of the company and he said, "Hey, look, our IT director we lost um you know, had to let go.
Can you guys onboard us like now as a managed customer?" And Jason works um with new customers on the way in. And at the time I was dealing with, you know, technical consulting and, you know, we we like to plan before we bring customers in, right? Um, so the short version of it is, uh, myself and one of our other partners who's not here today, Daniel Gilbert, he is our COO. Me and Daniel onboarded this customer by ourselves and our onboarding team probably wanted to pull their hair out because I'm sure we didn't check all the right boxes.
Um, but we brought the customer in overnight and literally onboarded them. We did a project, moved them to Exchange in the cloud, and then, you know, they're they're a valued customer of ours now, of course. Um, but that was a really cool success story to come in and play rescue, so to speak, and really get to know the agency in a much more intimate way, a lot faster than we anticipated. Um, but we, you know, we really value that relationship and we valued the opportunity based on the trust or, you know, what the business had confidence that we could help provide.
And so, uh, they're like three plus years running in now and it's it's a great relationship. That's one of many stories that we've had the privilege of of helping on the technical front. >> I love hearing that story and congratulations on the success there. Glad to know that they're still a customer. Of course, they are, but glad to know that they're still a customer till this day because of everything you went through with them. That's wonderful.
I love this conversation. and gentlemen, please tell me if we want to reach out to Kite Technology Group to learn more, whether we're a prospective client potentially, whether we're a shop that's looking to come back uh and say, "Hey, we're really thinking about switching. What could you do for us differently?" Or maybe even if we're an MSP in the industry who really wants to learn more, where can we go? >> So, email engage enegroup.com. Uh we're also on socials certainly YouTube.
We have a lot of great stuff going on there. We do LinkedIn as well and those are primarily places where we communicate. We also have a phone number 4103563113 and somebody nice will pick up the phone and talk to you there too. >> Well, Adam, Jason, thank you both so much for your time today. It's been a pleasure getting to finally speak with you and thank you so much. I look forward to following your success through the rest of the year. Yeah, thank you, Katie. >> Thanks for having us, Katie. >> Thanks so much to Adam and Jason for joining me today.
And thank you for watching or listening. You can check out every episode of Channel Insider Partner POV on channelinsider.com or watch us on YouTube at youtube.com/ channelinssider_news 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 to never miss an episode. You can come connect with us on social media with channel insider on LinkedIn and X or with me Katie Baboso. Once again, I'm your host Katie Bavoso and I'll see you next time.
This transcript was generated automatically from the
video's captions and may contain errors.
