Permanent Work from Home Technology Opportunities

looking to be the future of work.  With this change MSPs need to reevaluate their current situations and look into weaving service offerings, building new vendor relations, and building some new muscle mass.  Join Harry and Ted as they discuss the work from home transition, and the opportunities that await. 

Video Transcription

Harry Brelsford  0:03 

A Nation Nation back with Ted Hulsy out of the California Ted. Hi, good morning.

Ted Hulsy  0:11 

Hi, Harry. Good, good to be with you.

Harry Brelsford  0:13 

Hey, I want to I want to jump start something I did. I can't believe it's a year ago, I almost wrote this analysis. Good lord. Literally, March at the start of the pandemic, as we know it, I huddled with  Jeff Connally, former CEO of CMIT, the large franchise group out of Austin. And that's back when we could huddle spec when you could actually meet, literally a cup of coffee. Yeah. And he talked about, you know, he's still an advisor to the CMIT, they got acquired by private equity. And he was really starting to push that organization to think about the work from home movement is a 36 month opportunity, not just a 90 day surge. And so I did a piece on it. We've come full circle, and you can update me on this because you've just returned, assuming virtually from the Connectwise, evolve peer group. What quarterly meeting? Why don't you get it from there? So what Yeah, what happened at Connectwise? And why are you carrying the flag for the permanent work from home technology opportunities?

Ted Hulsy  1:18 

Yeah, so I last week, we spent two full days on zoom with our evolved peer group. So a group of about 12 msps. And yeah, I mean, a huge part of our conversation was how we very much have gone from COVID crisis management to kind of a state of stability to like a plateau to Okay, well, what's next. And I think, really, the msps need to think about the business opportunity, as a permanent hybrid future, where the office is no longer going to be there's an office of the future, and we need to define it. And it's no longer going to be like it used to be, even as more and more people start to return to the office, it's not going to be what it was before off the office is going to be less about housing, white collar workers or knowledge workers. And it's going to be more about culture and collaboration, and engaged client engagement, and brand and less about where people work. And that's going to be the case for headquarters and remote offices. And and then the work from home, it's going to be a permanent state of affairs and msps, I think really need to tackle the opportunity. Because it's 36 months, it's four years, it's five years, it's, it's the permanent state of it's going to be the future. And there's a huge opportunity to enable it. And I think a lot of MSPs need, it'll build a lot of a lot of new muscle mass, a lot of new vendor relationships, a lot of new service offerings to tackle the opportunity.

Harry Brelsford  2:42 

Yeah, a couple of couple of thoughts. One is, you know, I spend, I find myself spending a fair amount of time in Central Texas got a great client there, yada yada yada, yeah, a friend. I even have friends there, Ted. A friend showed me his mom's working environment. So she's in a chase Call Center in San Antonio, Texas, okay. Been at home for almost a year. Not not happy about it, because for her work is also social. See, she likes to go to the call center and have her friends and they got a happy hour and all that that's all about. So that's number one. Right? It's it's, there's there's a little bit of head stuff going on with and again, not necessarily what I call a white collar employee, you know what I'm saying just a worker be at a call center. And number two, I looked over what they shipped to her house to plug in and she pays for the internet. I strongly disagree with that. I think Chase should be paying for the internet, quite frankly. But But Ted, it was basically a brand new, you know, big screen, desktop computer. She does her job and does it well. But it felt like there was no security. I'd like really, you know, connected via Wi Fi to your spectrum. router. septet therein lies the opportunity. And then my maybe my last thought is it'll be insured. And we'll talk more about this. Let's make this an ongoing theme and 2021 because I again, I covered it. But I'm wondering, are you seeing the msps kind of downgrade the work from home opportunity along the lines of you remember 1020 years ago, some of our geeks are techies gotten to set up the home theater. Right? Yeah, go set up the $50,000 home theater for the CEO. And they did that and that was an era as a spike. Right. And then home theaters, you know, became just a lot cheaper and faster and better in that industry. Kind of what away? Point is culturally with your recent meetings with the peer group? Do you have people who like we're downgrading it like I don't you know, I don't Go to Holmes.

Ted Hulsy  5:01 

Well, that's interesting. I mean, there's a ton of that built in bias, because a lot of them were the ones who got burned, maybe with that kind of flash in the pan, you know, Home Entertainment setup thing. But the reality is is is the challenge is how do you make money doing it? How do you weave it into your service offering? And it's it even though there's a bias, I think the generally speaking people the mental shift is happening. And the reality is, you talk about that, that Chase worker Chase, or their contractor, whomever is her employer, they're only they only have a half, right? They at least ship some new equipment, which is right for the home office. But is it secure? Do you have the right expenses being reimbursed to the employees so that you're not going to end up with a class action lawsuit down the road? Are you Are you truly enabling productivity and happiness for your staff, in how they're set up? And all those are all like empty checkboxes right now. And I think everybody's in a state of reinvention. And it's a massive opportunity. And there's some MSPs that have like, you know, they had a VIP teleworker program five years ago, and they're the ones who 12 months ago, were ready to go because they could simply shift that. And that becomes the teleworker package for everybody. But it's like you said, it's everything. It's the right equipment. It's the right eight audio visual gear. It's the right security. It's the right networking configuration. It's the right vendors and service providers and expense management. So everything works together seamlessly. So it's not that easy. Yeah, that's right. That's it's not that easy. But that should spell because it's not easy. That should spell business opportunity.

Well, not living.

Harry Brelsford  6:46 

I it's also reality. I mean, it's it's we started with reality, I'm going to end with reality. So even if you find it distasteful, I remember an old joke and property management, you know, this developer was like, I don't like apartments. And I'm like, Why? Because people live there. But that's the reality. You're gonna go into the home. There's gonna be the bowl of half eaten oatmeal in the sink. Okay. Love it or leave it, but hey, man, I got a jet. Thanks. Well, we'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks, Ted

Great visiting Harry. Take care now. Bye. Bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai