Video: Why Building a Managed Services Offering Is A Team Effort

hey Channel insiders welcome back to channel Insider partner POV your source for untapped opportunities and unfiltered opinions in the it Channel all to help you make Better Business decisions I'm your host Katie boso hey exciting announcement here get ready for a first ofit kind recognition program from Channel Insider this list honors best in class Channel Partnerships and is 100% nomination based sourced directly from vendors and solution providers themselves got a partnership you want recognized VIP nomination applications are now open okay back to the interview my guest today is Karen Greer CEO of secure content Technologies a hybrid VAR MSP solution provider our conversation truly runs the gamut from implementing managed services to being a female CEO in a still Mal dominated industry to how security vendors can earn Karen's trust and what it takes to stand out in this crowded yet critical space of cyber security welcome Karen thank you very much I appreciate you having me today I appreciate you so much for being here I have to say that I believe you are the first us-based female CEO that I've had on the show which is absolutely wild so I'm so so personally excited to to have you here and it's just such an honor to get to talk to you and take a bit of your time but why don't we first talk about secure content Technologies you're a hybrid MSP and VAR so what kinds of services and solutions do you offer and who are your typical customers so we are 100% cyber security focused and I I consider us a boutique in in a way because we are kind of a hybrid right we tailor our Solutions and our services to what the client needs so some customers really want that whole MSP where we do all the work and others want to buy the solution and we're just kind of an Avenue for that our customers range anywhere from the small business up to very large corporations we've we've really Diversified the business or I have over the years so that if any one area kind of started to Teeter a little bit we were always in the safe zone so vertical wise we work with any and all verticals except for federal government so I'd like to double click on what you mentioned about those Services the managed Services because you you started as a VAR traditionally but then you Incorporated the managed services and Professional Services starting about 5 years ago can you walk me through that journey to incorporating them and what was it like saying we need to do this and here's how we're going to chart that course it became a louder and louder message that I heard from customers that cyber security was becoming so large and their staff might not have been growing along with that right from a technical standpoint and also the knowledge base that it took for those POs positions to be really good at what they were doing so you hear the story you know there's so much work but we don't have enough people to do the job so we started to kind of just very intentionally add services so our team is very unique in that not only are they completely certified and trained and accredited and all the solutions we offer but they work with them on a day-to-day basis so we bring a very unique view to the client of what we can actually do for them the MSP side there's a lot of I will say smaller customers that don't have an IT staff and so the MSP option often is very attractive to them because they can be very hands-off with it and as what they call manage detection and response has grown we build that into all of our offerings now to where especially from the MSP side there's a 24x7 threat hunting team always watching that environment and they can then alert us if there's an issue so it kind of helps me sleep better at night knowing that I've got that team behind us that can then in many cases they can remediate for us but they always let us know what's happening and involve us something that really interested me of when we first met and we're just kind of talking and getting to know each other is you mentioned that the MSP side of the business was you really listening to the technical people inside of your company as a leader who has to delegate and who has to bring a lot of people into one room to be able to come up with some final decisions what was important to you about letting them tell you what was necessary on that journey to be able to get to success with those managed services is oh gosh so delegation has been not the easiest thing for me to embrace right it's it's hard but when I started to really Embrace that and delegate and really listen to what they were telling me it became a much more pleasurable business to run and in addition I'm not the one doing the technical work obviously so they're in there with the customers they're hearing what the customers say they're seeing the challenges it just makes perfect sense to listen to what they're saying and then we have a dialogue back and forth well what if this or what if that and it it becomes a situation where it all just works like you're sharing ideas which is the team I want to build I want to build a team that always comes to me and says hey we think we'd like to try this or we think this maybe isn't working so what else could we do here that to me is just the way to grow a solid company everybody's efforts matter moving on from there Karen uh speaking of verticals I noticed there is a lot of talk about K through 12 on your website for secure cont Technologies is that vertical or is there a particular vertical that maybe for yourself you get more excited about than others uh you've been in the space for a long time so I am curious to know if there's one that really lights you up there's a a lot of them that light me up but as far as spe if you talk about K12 that's an area for me that just had a personal interest in giving them the service and the attention that they so deserve and working through their budget challenges with them is something that I just get a lot of pleasure out of and I've been able to build very long-term solid relationships with K12 schools that are our customers and I just enjoy that part of the business and there's one area a solution set that we provide that actually is about student mental health their well-being um it can track where the kids are what they're doing if they're doing Google searches on things of how to harm themselves or they don't have enough food things like that that whole product line has just really opened my eyes to kind of what's going on with our young people and that solution has saved many many lives over the time that we've been represented it so from a personal standpoint I've enjoyed that we're also having a lot of success in financial services because SEC is launching all these new rules and guidelines around cyber security and you know you may have a financial investor that that doesn't necessarily have an IT department or understand completely what the compliance issues that they need to solve so we've really invested a lot of time effort money all those types of things into that industry so that we can be a good trusted advisor for financial services companies can you kind of explain that to me because I see other people other businesses who work in federal for example and cmmc is a constantly evolving situation and it could be frustrating but for you it sounds like as that sector changes and tightens those rules it actually brings in business for you it does and just like we are a trusted advisor I have trusted advisors too in that industry and so they may come to me and say hey the SEC was here they did an audit and now these things are changing now we have to actually have tracking And archiving and things that we didn't have to do before so while I'm I'm learning you know the the book side the educational side I'm also making sure that I learn real life examples of what's going on when an audit takes place what new rules are coming down the pike which ones aren't here yet but we know they're coming right that sort of thing I took that to heart there's a couple of our clients that are very good at helping me stay on top of of the regulations so that I'm I'm confident that when we go into accounts we can help them when it comes to the differentiators of secure content Technologies how do you stand out in this industry as a hybrid solution provider where we're looking at thousands of msps vars msps people who play in this similar space so what makes secure content technology stand out from the pack when I started this business in 200 six there were a couple foundational principles that I really started it on and it wasn't fear-based right it was all about trust and ethics and so that is how we treat all of our clients but in addition to that we treat our vendors that way we stand Upon Our ethics and our honesty and in every case we're not a solution Pusher we are not just a product selling machine we really go in and establish a solid relationship a solid rapport with our customers and our vendors so that we're a team it's not just us coming and saying oh you need endpoint security you need EMR archiving you need web filter you no the the very first thing we do is listen first what are they worried about what are their concerns do they feel like they have any holes are they underst staffed where can we fit in and in a lot of times budgets always come into play right so you have to be first of top of mind with that and be the client's Advocate if we know they have X amount in their budget then that's what I'm going to go and negotiate for to make sure that we canet those needs and talking a little bit more about your clients where are you seeing a pattern of difficulty or maybe misunderstanding or risk within that customer base in 2024 I do hear a lot of the I don't have enough sta to complete all the projects that I have I hear that at least probably five times a day and that's where we come in then and say well we we do actually have a proservices team if you have projects that maybe you can't take on right now we could take those on for you sometimes you can see relief right like oh great we've got a trusted resource and sometimes it might take me years to build that trust level you know know I got a an email from a customer the other day and he said we've worked with you for 20 years you've always treated us impeccably every solution that you've ever sold to us has worked out perfectly and after all these years I just wanted to reach out and tell you I consider you my friend and that really meant actually the world to me right because in our industry everything is so fast-paced like we're we're always all running around you know way behind our workload and what we need to do and so for him to take the time to do that really spoke a lot to the company and not it wasn't just about me it was about my whole team with that said are there any success stories with clients that come to mind of when you say I need a banner to really show potential clients that we we rock this is what we do best what comes to mind as a success story for you gosh we had a very interesting one so a local company here in Cincinnati not a huge firm but you know midsize around 50ish employees they had been hit by ransomware and the technology company that they had or networking company that they had doing their computer work at the time thought that they had contained the threat only to find out a week later that every last bit of their data was locked up in ransomware and you know you could just see the absolute fear on the owner's face so we got involved and within an hour we had an incident Response Team actually a sofos incident response resp team we came in and with the SOS instent Response Team within an hour had the threat identified by the end of that day we were able to contain it figure out how it had gotten in and over the next couple days it did take a couple days luckily we were able to get their backup reestablished and recuperate all their data for them um they have become since then a very valued client no more incidents and I feel like we did we did an amazing job it's it's very hard to get the whole team within an hour when a threat is is launched Ken you mentioned in the beginning very much that there is no one- siiz fits-all solution you're not going to push something onto your customers you're going to listen to them but when it comes to the threats that we're seeing today ransomware hackers things that are just kind of coming to mind that we see in the headlines is there any piece of advice that you do have for end user businesses out there of where they can start to be more secure honestly I would say find a a very trusted resource find a company like mine that has been I've been doing this 30 years now and so i' I've watched The Evolution from antivirus software to what we have today which is just this huge plethora of different solutions for different things and I think from an end user perspective that can be very hard to sip through and for them to say what actually do I need of all these things what's the most important thing to start with and so that's typically what we do is we start small we take a look at at what they have that they can keep in place that's working well and then we may recommend a few things from the start not to reinvent the wheel but to just get them started so that we can secure them better in in my view the manag detection and response offering that we're seeing now from security vendors is incredibly valuable to customers so I I do actually like to recommend that very important advice for sure you're as I mentioned earlier the first first us-based female CEO of a channel business that I've spoken to on this series in the year that I've been doing it which is it's mindblowing and I get so excited to talk to you but I also want to recognize that I'm excited about it but does that mean that we're still seeing kind of those shortcomings for opportunities for women in this industry in this space and I just would like to know what has been your experience with that is it where we're seeing women get more opportunity now or would you say that we're seeing this still be a more male dominated industry in in Tech in general I think that it is a male-dominated industry but I I don't feel that that's been that women are being shut out from it I just think it is more maybe not a field that always attracts women I remember when I first got involved in and I thought uh I don't know this this just seems boring but it wasn't boring right because it became all about the people it become about the customers and then it just it just kind of snowballed from there I think there's a lot of opportunity for women in Tech and you're seeing more and more like women in Tech organizations things like that that I think are helping them along and and sometimes maybe it it helps to find a mentor I am surprised when I am involved in things that many times I'm the only woman in the room um but you know after doing it for so long it doesn't really enter your head too much anymore you just think this is the way Tech is you mentioned about finding a mentor do you have any advice that you would give to somebody if they came up to you at a conference and said Karen I really want to grow to be in the position that you're into one day and do you have any advice for me to get there what would you say to them you got to start small right you have to start and really really make sure you're educated in the industry and the trends and the different solutions and you have to always conduct yourself in a very professional and trustworthy manner right because it it is you're in the security space so your your goal is to gain people's trust and I think that's very important in cyber security because a lot of times I'll hear people with fear-based messaging and that's never part of my Mantra and it never will be the threats are there we're all very well aware and so it you really need to be more consultative more trustworthy more invested in the customer right so that you're not going ins saying the sky is falling it's not about that I think that the industry like I would I would find a mentor whether it be a male or a female find somebody that's been doing this for 10 or 15 or more years and pick their brain it's someone actually reached out to me from a vendor this week and had some career decisions to make would I spend 15 minutes with her of course of course I'm going to spend fit not that I have all the answers but of course you can run something by me I've made enough mistakes in in this world that have taught me what not to do you also brought up trust and that leads me to consider the the summer that we've seen where trust involved in cyber security has been so critical because we have seen things like the crowd strike in inent with the Microsoft outage we have seen some really widespread hacks of personal information just uh across the end user public alone when it comes to trusting the vendors who are providing those cyber Security Solutions to you what do you look for in a vendor so I've heavily invested in the channel my whole career and and by that I mean there's vendors that are very Channel focused and there's vendors that are not and I tend to gravitate towards the ones that are investing in me as a business as well so we're we're a true team and the vendors that I find that are transparent with the partners that invest in the partners and invest in their Solutions are the ones that I tend to gravitate towards I sit on some advisory councils for some of some of the vendors that I represent and the reason I do that is it's just like me listening to my staff I'm the feet on the street for the vendor and so it's it's those vendors that are saying to their partner community I want to hear what you have to say you're important to me that means the world to a partner and for me you know I'm very very passionate about what I do both from the vendor standpoint and the customer standpoint and I do think you know let's face it with the whole the whole crowd strike thing no cyber security company ever wants to go through that and so when I watched that happen I felt more empathy for them then I did oh that they had done some terrible thing clearly they didn't intention do it so I felt very empathetic towards that are there any vendors that you feel are investing in you right now that you would feel comfortable shouting out oh sure I'm going to give a huge shout out to sofos they are an amazing company to partner with I do sit on their partner advisory Council but they're invested in Us in marketing the channel team we have our own you know Channel representative that is always there to go to bat for us their solution set has grown into a portfolio that I firmly believe and I use it daily their new CEO Joe Levy I am just all in I feel like they're listening they're investing there's ethics involved there and Trust level and so to me that means a lot as a business owner so if we're an end user customer or maybe we're up here in the channel and we'd like to get in touch with you or learn more about secure content Technologies what can we do where can we go absolutely so we have a a wonderful website it's secure content technologies.com they could also reach out by email my email is kreer secure content technologies.com either one of those are great places to start Karen thank you so much for your time today it's been a pleasure getting to know you and speak with you and good luck through the rest of the year good luck to you too you'll be wildly successful thanks so much to Karen for joining me and thank you for watching or listening you can check out all episodes of Channel Insider partner POV on Channel insider.com or watch us on YouTube at Channel inssider newws and trend you can also listen to the podcast version of every episode 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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