“Many organizations are looking internally for more efficient and productive ways of doing business.”

Interview by Kevin Ohashi of Ohashi Media
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Andrew Cohen is the Founder of Vertical IT.  Andrew has a background in Management and Computer Science and received his degree from Florida State University.  Andrew founded Vertical IT in 2001 after working in the IT industry for many years.  Vertical IT provides outsourced business IT services.  They have a growing team of experts that provide IT related services for businesses in 4 categories: planning, building, connecting and caring.  To use their words, Vertical IT operates “like they are their client’s employees.”  Vertical IT has been growing rapidly despite the recession and has added 16 staff in the past 3 months and has over 50 staff total.

MO:
You’ve added 16 people to your staff in the past few months, what has allowed Vertical IT to do so well despite the economy?

Andrew Cohen:
The economy has been a contributing factor to our service growth this year. Many organizations are looking internally for more efficient and productive ways of doing business. With the labor challenge, they are looking to technology versus employees to accomplish this business objective.

The thriving companies during this time have learned to focus in on their core business and value proposition. If you’re an insurance agency, manufacturer, distributor, professional services or even non-profit organizations, technology is not a competency done well internally. Since they usually rely on one or two staff members, this becomes a limitation of the company’s success with technology and a cost determinate to getting professional outside help.  Therefore, outsourcing is a cost-effective and quality alternative to increasing full time IT staff. Our growth is a testament to the widespread embrace of such arrangements.

MO:
I am curious why you choose to use the word outsource with your company, do you find any stigma attached to the word, especially in IT services?

Andrew Cohen:
Absolutely, especially for companies that were early adopters of outsourcing and have failed with it.  With that said, we are what we are…an outsourced IT department for today’s thriving companies.  We’ve built a “best practice” and offer our clients a superior source of technology services.  We also do everything from, strategy & budget, preventive maintenance, enterprise technology projects and a 7/24 remote support services.  By embracing our “better way to do IT” motto, our clients have significantly benefited from focusing on their “client objectives” rather than building a competency with technology.   Lastly, none of our staff are 1099 contract workers, nor is anyone located overseas.  So we can predict and take full accountability of the service level expectations and ensure an outstanding user experience.

MO:
Rumor is, everyone in Vertical IT closes sales and that you’re responsible for this culture.  Could you tell us about your sales process and what makes it so effective?  How can others learn from it?

Andrew Cohen:
I’ve grown up in the technology sales world.  I started my career working in or selling to Fortune 500 companies and carried their sales-oriented culture with me when I founded Vertical IT Solutions.  Over this 23-year history, I’ve learned to embed elements of customer service and business development as part of our delivery processes, always with the expectation that we are “looking out” for our clients and Vertical IT’s interests.  This win/win delivery process empowers everyone to impact our customers’ success, and selling is part of a productive relationship.  We are firm believers in a consultative sales process. We listen and provide sound advice and solutions tailored to the clients’ needs.  That takes a special breed of salesperson, and we work hard to identify those people and cultivate their consultative sales skills.

Our team (outside of business development) is not commissioned or quoted.  They are compensated based on profitability for each quarter they contribute.  This is how the entire company gets is recognized for our sales success.

Culture is very important for me. Not because I’m the biggest cheerleader (which I am), but because I’ve embedded our culture into the delivery and sales processes.  This way, the culture is less about my personality and more about a way of operating that becomes second nature to our team and is not dependent on my involvement.

MO:
What inspired you to start Vertical IT?  You started right at the end of the bubble where the culture for IT based companies was at its lowest in many years.  Why was that the right time for you to start?  What were the biggest obstacles to starting up that you encountered?

Andrew Cohen:
Starting Vertical IT was always my plan.  Long before the managed services model became ubiquitous, we had a complete system in place for preventive maintenance and proactive support. Our processes, friendly team members, and straightforward executive reporting allowed our clients to make smart decisions about their technology needs that were in line with their strategic business goals. Even with the MSP tools today, we still stand head and shoulders above our competition in delivering an exceptional service experience for our clients.

As for the burst of the dotcom bubble, I viewed it as an excellent opportunity to start a technology company.  All the mediocre players were gone and the market for technology was destined to climb back again.  Most businesses are completely reliant upon great technology systems to keep them competitive and their employees productive.  So it was just a matter of time before the pendulum swung back and growing companies would need us.

The biggest obstacle is differentiation.  The market is filled with competition it’s a real challenge to differentiate yourself from other IT providers.  But the quality and consistency varies so much in terms of everything from IT certifications to customer service experience.  In our industry, you don’t even need a certification to do IT.  Branding the quality, commitment and integrity message was (and is) our biggest difference.  It took us the better part of eight years to achieve widespread recognition for quality, commitment, and integrity, but now those attributes are synonymous with Vertical IT Solutions.

MO:
You were described as having a hiring slow and firing fast approach to finding the right people for your organization.  The last part reminds me of Zappos (they offer their staff a large amount of cash to quit after a couple weeks, those that aren’t really a fit take it and move on), but could you tell us how the two fit together and how it works in your mind?

Andrew Cohen:
Having the right people in our organization is everything.  It’s imperative that everyone at Vertical IT Solutions shares our company’s absolute dedication to the customer.  There is no more important thing to do than to take care of what our customers need.  If we hire people that don’t share that mentality, they won’t make it here.  We’ve built our reputation on responsiveness and competence.  It’s what keeps our customers happy and referring their colleagues and friends to us.

We made plenty of mistakes in hiring over the years.  As a result, we’ve invested in a seven-step process to bring new team members on to Vertical IT Solutions.  This includes testing, screening, references and team interviews to identify the match in culture; technical, problem solving, and business skills; and customer service.  We enable our team members to make decisions for our clients and Vertical IT, so they need think like owners and assimilate our core values.

As for firing fast, we subject new hires to a probation period of 90 days and do a great job of measurement and inspection once new people come on board.  We’ve found that during probation, the new team member’s actions speak louder than words.  If a hire isn’t a fit or up to our standards, his or her fellow team members will usually “vote” that person out of the company.  We are building a team with the team, in alignment with our values, so it’s critical that all new members fit well in the organization.

MO:
Your goal is for your employees to think of themselves as part of your clients’ organizations.  Who are your average clients and how do you keep the staff connected with them?  What are the challenges of running an outsourced IT company and staying close to the client?

Andrew Cohen:
Actually, we feel the clients OWN the company, and they own the success of our business.  Every team member understands this from new team member orientation to being on call  any time of the night for our clients.  Our organization rewards this behavior through recognition and financial incentives.  We live by our tagline, We’ll be right there, when our clients need us.  Our clients are usually small and medium size businesses who leverage technology strategically and need a trusted partner with the expertise and resources necessary to get ANY technical job done.  Our clients count on us for perfect maintenance of the technology they rely on to support the productivity of their staff, the automation of manual processes, and continuous uptime. They also trust that we’ll be proactive in advising them on budget, securing access to their information, and other ways they can be using technology solutions to grow their business. It goes back to that consultative approach that starts with our sales process – we carry that to the management of our accounts and the relationships we develop with our customers over the years.

What is the challenge to running an outsourced IT company?  Managing client/user expectations.  Our clients’ needs are complex and driven by subjective factors.  We’ve developed strong processes and continuous improvement methods to ensure that our clients’ technology needs are well met, that they are happy with our service and find every person they deal with at Vertical IT Solutions a pleasure the deal with. We’ve also adopted best practices from Fortune 500 companies into our tools and processes to ensure that deliverables are communicated clearly to minimize confusion and ensure that our team and the client are always on the same page.

We occasionally miss, but it’s rare.  When we do, we always try to recover quickly.  It’s difficult, but with 97 percent client satisfaction, I think we are getting there!