Budget constraints? Consider Third Party Services
Businesses are getting creative in looking for ways to work with recently reduced budgets, including the possibility of delaying projects, consolidating staff, and even reconsidering their physical footprint. These are not easy decisions. There are, however, heroes made in situations that can answer the call of cost reduction without sacrifice to resources.
No industry is immune. If you're in sales, your customers top question may no longer be "how much does it cost?", but instead "how much will this save?" If you can answer that question in a quantifiable fashion, you might just become a small-time hero.
An often overlooked area is within a company's Data Center. Data Center equipment includes network hardware, routers, switches, a variety of storage hardware, and server hardware. According to a 2019 survey of more than 500 IT decision-makers, 98% of companies run on-premise server hardware. As with any business technology, maintenance and support are instrumental in ensuring up-time within the Data Center. It is an essential aspect of the business, so much so that when Data Center equipment can no longer be supported by the manufacturer, many businesses simply budget for replacement equipment. Unfortunately, there are also many businesses without the capital available for an equipment upgrade who instead find themselves without equipment warranties with no safety net of a maintenance and support contract in place. If an extended warranty is offered on aging equipment by the manufacturer, it can be very costly.
Faced with either a large capital expense to upgrade equipment or the risk running on equipment that is not warrantied, businesses are between a rock and a hard place. But there is another option called Third Party Services.
Third Party Services (TPS) target this post-warranty reality and allows the end-user to keep their assets longer while maintaining a service option at a considerable discount (typically between 40-70% off) when compared to the OEM post-warranty offerings, if they are even available. TPS is not a new option for the Data Center industry and has decades of research that back up its viability. Because the motivation is for the end-user to keep the equipment longer and avoid going back to an OEM or reseller to buy new, a TPS partner must strive to ensure gear can be serviced as effectively as possible.
TPS offers the ability to provide co-term contracts, mixed SLA's (Service Level Agreements with next business day, 7x24, etc.), and cancelable contracts with only 30 days notice. These are all examples of how a Third Party option meets the specific needs of the end customer as opposed to the cookie-cutter/one-size-fits-all approach often presented by an OEM.
While all of this is great news for the end customer, resellers can benefit from offering these services to their customers as it opens additional revenue opportunities in an increasingly competitive environment. Additionally, the savings realized by the end customer can in turn be allocated to other projects that may have otherwise been delayed.
Cranel partners with the world's largest post-warranty data center service provider to bring this offering to our partner resellers, offering a new way to bring value to your end customers. Contact your Cranel Sales Representative for more information on how TPS can help you and your customers.
June 10, 2020