Essential Management
Take a look at the elements implemented by great integrators
- By Dan Rothrock
- Mar 01, 2020
There are essential elements that great integrators
and managed service providers have that set them
apart from the competition. These elements can
be learned and developed over time. If these elements
come together through a responsive and disciplined
process that produces measurable results, then you have a
truly unique and valuable company. The elements are:
- Engagement: The three questions of why
- Shared measures of performance
- Highly leveraged partnerships
- Professional disciplines
- Formalized methodology
Looking at Each Element Through
the Lens of an Integrator
Conquest Solutions, LLC was established in 2004 in Marietta,
GA, by Rose and Lance Retter. Lance is the COO and has worked
in the IT industry since 1999. After studying Management of Information
Systems at the University of Georgia and managing
the IT department for a publicly traded company, Lance opened
Conquest Solutions. His experience in IT and passion for technology
drives him to make sure Conquest is consistently delivering
the best products and services, including managed IT support
services, video surveillance, access control and VoIP phone
services.
Managed IT support services. This is all about outsourcing one
of the most difficult strategic services that any organization must
provide. It is difficult to stay on the cutting edge of technology
while maintaining a level of service through highly technical resources.
For many companies, it is a losing game. Conquest provides
“on-demand talent” providing economies of scale at a lower
cost compared to doing it in-house.
Video surveillance and analytics. Conquest partners with a
leading video management provider to provide a simplified screen
layout, intuitive controls and customizable features that improve
multi-person interactions. With capabilities including advanced
object tracking, demographics, dwell and loitering, license plate
recognition, people counting and others, video analytics can enhance
the security, revenues and efficiencies of any business.
Access control security systems. If you need to manage and
control who can enter doors and gates to the building or facility,
you need access control. Given the number of security threats a business or organization must defend in today’s world, controlling
access to your building or facility is a serious concern.
Conquest offers scalable solutions to meet ever-changing environments
of business from entry level to enterprise systems. The
solutions provide flexibility and performance that customers expect
from a technology security company.
VoIP phone services. Telecom costs are being digitally transformed
and optimized. Conquest offers VoIP, which saves customers
money while improving collaboration, boosting productivity,
increasing mobility and enhancing the customer experience.
Tools such as presence, instant messaging, web conferencing, fax
and voicemail to email can become part of a customer’s communications
portfolio.
Using Communication To
Increase Performance
To support these pillars, Lance has created a core process of engagement
with and through his people. He first recognized, from
his experience, that the network was the backbone of a company’s
infrastructure. If the network was robust, scalable and delivered
information at the time of need, it would deliver a distinctive
advantage to his customer’s business.
An essential part of that backbone is the ability to communicate.
Communication is critical to every business process. In this
increasingly mobile world, work phones and cell phones must be
seamless, so transformation of the digital network and the phone
exchange system (PBX) is also essential.
When applied to a use case, Lance cited the property managers
he works with on a daily basis. Their security systems often
communicate with call centers that then route to a guard. He is
helping with the time -to-value of this exchange by tying the new
SIP phones from Zenitel into the PBX. For condominiums and
assisted living facilities, he is applying a low-cost door entry intercom
system tied to a PBX.
“We don’t like to mess around with ‘critical path solutions,’”
Lance said. “Life safety and convenience go together.”
Lance also believes in proactive monitoring at the end point
for up-time and performance, adding: “We can tell when a device
is registered or off-line. Often we are calling or servicing the client
before they know they have an outage.”
End point devices rarely fail because of the equipment. It usually
is related to cable failure, vandalism, electrical surges or user
error. There are many IT and security installers that claim to provide
managed services. But few have the DNA.
“We monitor, manage and then measure the performance of
our clients,” Lance said. “Everything we install, we monitor. And
then we support the clients and our field technicians through our
help desk team of experienced IT Engineers that can communicate
online or over the phone.”
To be trusted, Conquest had to own the building. To own the
building, Conquest evaluates the existing operational environment,
asking the “why” questions that will lead their team to understanding
how the building and the network acts as a tool to
create organizational value. For property management, the keys
to long term success are attracting and retaining the right tenants
and making the building more valuable as a result.
“We may not win their business at first because of a competitor’s
short-term outlook over cheap devices or services,” Lance
said. “But once a customer experiences the low-cost vendor solutions
and service, they ask us back in to fix it. We become their
outsourced CIO, a trusted partner on their team.”
Building Relationships With
Customers and Vendor Partners
A key part of that team-centric culture results in Conquest becoming
a part of the budget planning process. They have the performance
metrics and how they impact the business. They have
the data.
“If you have the right data, you can collaborate on the strategic
initiatives that are critical to the business,” he said. “We make
them aware of the opportunity and the risk of each decision they
make including the way they maintain their systems. Mismanaged
networks and devices that are not maintained or measured
result in throwing away your investment over time.”
At the end of the day, relationships are formed through consistent
meetings, generating interactive reports that show how
the building is performing and demonstrating how these services
have helped their business.
“We can slice and dice the data to give them a cost, priority,
or a status perspective on up-time, cyber intrusions, warranty expirations
or the most recent back-ups,” Lance said. “Your investments
must be monitored so that budgets can be planned. No
one needs a surprise when your reputation and value is at stake.”
Conquest also believes in relationships with their key vendor
partners. With communication as a critical component of his
company’s value proposition, he evaluates vendors on local response
times of their business contacts as well as their technical
support. Finally, the vendor must supply a product that factors in
the total cost of purchasing, installing, monitoring and maintaining
it over time, known as total cost of ownership (TCO).
“Zenitel is a good example,” Lance said. “The number one
bottleneck in a managed service program is the inability for your
vendors to respond at the time of need with knowledge and experience.
Right behind that is the inability to hear, be heard, and
be understood when using an audio system. Zenitel is considered
best of breed in both areas, ultimately making them the best value
to our clients and our business. Finally, the ability to connect easily
into a unified communication system through a standard and
open SIP protocol allows us to continue to create holistic solutions
for our clients.”
Conquest’s journey in constructing a valuable and unique
business model is relevant to any service provider as well as to
the end users who are attempting to leverage the model for their
own optimization efforts. At the end of the day,
business is 24/7 and outsourcing infrastructure
that keeps it running is becoming essential in
generating value to the business.
This article originally appeared in the March 2020 issue of Security Today.