Brennan IT has scored a double, with recognition both in Australia and worldwide, by the MSPmentor 100 Global Edition report, as the number one Australian managed services provider and the fourth top provider globally.

Dave Stevens, managing director of Brennan IT – an Australian-based cloud computing provider – said in recognition of its “outstanding performance and strong growth in recurring revenues” the company had been named the #1 managed services provider in Australia, fourth globally, taking out top honours for the third consecutive year.

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This is the third consecutive year Brennan IT has taken out top honours.

The MSPmentor 100 Global Edition Report is a distinguished list compiled by Nine Lives Media, which identifies the world’s top 100 managed services providers (MSPs). Drawn from data collected by MSPmentor’s global online survey conducted October-December 2011, the list recognises top managed services providers – both on a global and also regional level – based on a range of metrics, including annual managed services revenue growth, revenue per employee, managed services offered and customer devices managed.

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What exactly do we mean by ROI?

Unfortunately, there’s no exact definition. What’s generally meant however is this – what return am I going to see on this investment, and how long will it be before the benefits outweigh the costs?

It can be a complex question, but it’s one that’s important to ask. Without a thorough assessment, you can’t be confident that a product or project is right for your business.

Assessing ROI

Any assessment of ROI must evaluate benefits and costs. The biggest mistake in most ROI assessments is the latter: businesses often underestimate project costs.

That’s because they fail to take into account what is known in IT as total cost of ownership (TCO). TCO includes not only the direct and immediate cost of a new IT system, but also what expenses it will incur in the long run.

Make sure that your assessment includes labour and maintenance costs, the costs of any associated management or service contracts, as well as usage costs.

Often overlooked is what I call “adhoc discretionary spending” – the expense of the additional projects that often accompany a large IT investment, such as adding new features or deeper integration six months or a year from now.

Remember to assess both tangible and intangible costs and benefits. Tangible items (such as a direct saving when a new system costs, say, $5,000 a month to run instead of $8,000) should always figure more heavily in your evaluation than intangible benefits which you can’t price.

What’s acceptable?

Of course, it all depends on what you’re looking for, but for most IT projects an ROI of between 12 and 18 months is considered a fair payback.

On bigger projects, such as infrastructure deals, a reasonable ROI can stretch out to two years.

The closer the project gets to its point of positive return, the faster it should usually be delivering its returns.

Improving the equation

The ROI equation is affected not only by the technology you’re introducing but also the current state of your business.

The best time to achieve good ROI is usually at the end of a refresh cycle when your current equipment can be depreciated.

Moving offices or establishing a new location also tends to tip the ROI equation in your favour.

Interrogate what your vendor tells you

Because there’s no standardised way of calculating ROI, it’s important to carefully interrogate any ROI assessments that potential IT providers offer you.

Examine carefully which costs they’re including in their equations and whether the benefits they’re suggesting you’ll achieve are reasonable. They’re not out to dupe you (many will in fact deliberately present a conservative case) but they don’t know your business as well as you do, specifically the precise productivity, efficiency or other dividends you’re likely to gain.

The best isn’t always best

Finally, keep in mind that the solution that promises the best ROI won’t always be best.

There will always be providers out there who are willing to do things very cheaply, and their ROI equations will hide the fact that their solutions are inferior.

Be sure that in addition to presenting a positive ROI case, your IT vendor is also one who you’re confident will deliver. IT projects always work best where there’s a long-term relationship in which both parties have “skin the game”.

Dave Stevens is MD, Brennan IT

(This blog post was first published on the SmartCompany website on February 16 2012).

Doing it well is an art, and presentations that are lacklustre mean the presenter’s message and aims go begging. Maintaining the audience’s attention is vital if you’re going to convey what you need to, to keep your audience interested and to get them to remember what it is you’re wanting them to take away.

Here are some hints and tips on what I think are useful considerations when giving presentations. Each point should be considered for both internal and external presentations:

1. Understand your audience

Unless you know who your audience are and, more importantly, what it is they’re going to want to know, your presentation is likely to miss the mark. Take the time to understand who you’re presenting to, and make sure that your expectations are both aligned. What are they expecting, and what are you wanting them to take away?

2. Stick to what’s crucial

Meandering presentations will quickly lose attention. Spend most of the time presenting what’s important. For every point in your presentation, ask yourself, “does it really need to be there”? Why have 35 slides when just 10 will do? This will help to avoid the dreaded ‘death by PowerPoint’!

3. Tell a story

This is key! Make sure that your presentation has a beginning, a middle and an end! Once you know what you want to say, make sure it’s part of a larger narrative. You might start with a graph of your company’s performance, for example, then point to which aspect of it your presentation is going to address. Finish with a summary of some key points or actions, which helps the audience to know that the presentation is coming to a close. Do not ‘read’ your slides, ‘present’ them!

4. Anticipate questions

Think about questions you may be asked and prepare your answers beforehand. Questions are a great way to establish that the audience was engaged and are now looking for further information or details surrounding the content that has just been presented.

5. Keep your PowerPoint/Keynote/Prezi simple

Make sure that you’re the focus of your presentation, not your slides. Keep them free of fancy effects, tacky clip art and any unnecessary gimmicks.  Try to use as few words on each slide as possible, as your audience will simply read the content of the slides if they are full of text. Avoid this by having one or two comments, relevant pictures or charts and talk about the details in which you are intending to deliver. This will help to make sure that your audience listens and engages with you, and not your content heavy slides!

6. Practice

If the presentation is important, practice! Edit as you go, move slides around and delete what’s unnecessary. By the time you’ve finished a third run through, your presentation will be twice as good.  It is important that you know what is coming next and that you flow along comfortably with your presentation’s beginning, middle and end.

How do you try to prepare for presentations? Do you have any tips to share?

From the iPad to BlackBerry’s PlayBook and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, the number of devices is growing, as is their business potential.

Windows 8, to be released this year, has the potential to be a watershed moment for tablets in business, with Microsoft promising a more integrated experience, in addition to a new, touch-focused interface called Metro.

So what exactly do tablets have to offer?

For business, their biggest benefit is mobility. Anywhere/anytime computing has fast become an expectation, and tablets offer great scope to improve customer service and productivity.

When connected to 3G (and soon 4G) wireless networks, tablets offer everything from mobile email access to an increasing amount of CRM, ERP, sales and other functions.

Businesses such as Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan and General Electric all have iPad projects of one kind or another, and the US retailer Sears has deployed 5,000 iPads to help track inventory and orders.

But it’s not only big business that can benefit. Indeed small- and mid-sized businesses are often in a better position to integrate tablets into their processes, taking advantage of lighter and more adaptable infrastructures.

What challenges will you face?

The problems that most businesses could face when adopting tablets are as follows:

Security

Cloud computing and mobility have changed the security equation, and it’s vital that you consider the implications tablet computing will have for protecting your business data and that of your customers.

Consider where and how data will be accessed, and for how long it will reside on the tablet device (if at all).

If you have tablets in your business, one or more will eventually be lost or stolen. Authentication, encryption and remote-wipe capabilities should all be considerations. Different tablets have different possibilities. BlackBerry, for example, makes much of the PlayBook’s strict and secure approach to email, calendars and data (though there have been recent reports of exploits).

Management

Businesses adopting tablets and smartphones are of course looking to do it in an effective way – not only in terms of installation and rollout, but also ongoing support.

Admittedly, some of the tools available in this regard are currently less than ideal. However, expect the demand for business tablets to produce a range of improved tools for managing and supporting mobile devices.

Applications

Email and messaging aside, the real power in tablets stems from the applications they can carry.

Exactly which will be most important to you will depend on your business, but most CRM and ERP systems are now delivered with web-based interfaces that are usable on tablet devices, and, more preferably, some also have native apps for the platform of your choice.

And while the view that tablets are primarily for content consumption rather than production is still firm in the minds of many, new innovations such as the delivery of Microsoft Office to tablets via the cloud, means that that balance is slowly changing.

Perhaps the most challenging area is custom applications – “mobilising” any unique or bespoke systems your business uses. These projects can be complex, so it’s important to keep an eye on ROI.

Summing up

The capabilities and productivity of tablet computing is only getting better. Improved mobile networks, cloud services and hardware will make the light-weight, easily-transported tablet a device of choice for an increasing number of tasks.

In 2012, expect Windows 8 to introduce a raft of business-friendly features while also providing better integration with your existing systems.

What’s been your experience with tablet computing?

Dave Stevens is MD, Brennan IT

(This blog post was first published on the SmartCompany website on February 09 2012).

Apps are becoming so popular that some start-ups are bypassing a website in favour of developing their own smartphone tool.

One entrepreneur that has taken this approach is Jonathan Barouch, chief executive and founder of social networking platform called roamz.

Roamz describes itself as “your personal tour guide to what’s going on around you”. For instance, let’s say you’re in Bondi on Australia Day. Checking in to roamz might tell you people are at the Havaianas Thong Race or at the OpenAir Cinema. You can also tell others what you’ve enjoyed.

At Brennan IT, we think the first thing to understand about customer loyalty is that loyal customers aren’t found, but made.

The most important driver is of course good customer service. But, for us, there’s also the question of understanding a customer’s business – of being able to identify how their needs will change as they grow, and building that relationship over time.

Customer service

The best way to lose a customer is to disappoint them.

At Brennan IT we concentrate our efforts on the delivering the kind of service that we believe our customers need. We think the customer service equation is about responsiveness, proactiveness, understanding and follow-through.

Something we keep in mind is that part of the reason for our initial success was that other providers – typically very large ones – weren’t serving mid-market customers well. Basic needs were (usually) met, but poor customer service meant that customers were looking to jump ship. We’re pleased that in those early days many of the customers who did are still our customers today.

Genuine understanding

Just as important as day-to-day service, we think, is long-term understanding.

There are two aspects to this. The first is customer understanding: knowing and continually revisiting the customer’s business, examining their needs and making suggestions about technologies that can improve how they work.

The second is product development: anticipating the future needs of customers and looking at how existing technologies can be adapted (or new technologies created) to meet them.

In this respect, customer service is not only about what customers see, but also the development work behind the scenes that they don’t see until the products in question are ready for their needs.

We think that both together are a great formula for producing loyal customers. What do you think? How have you tried to foster customer loyalty?

Leading Australian managed services and cloud computing provider, Brennan IT, is bringing Microsoft Hyper-V to its cloud platform following the recent $1.5 million upgrade of its Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) platform as it gears up to meet what it says is rising demand for its cloud services.

With cloud revenues expected to account for 30 per cent of Brennan IT’s business within the next 12 months, managing director Dave Stevens says the move is a “reflection of the market’s demand for proven cloud solutions and supports the company’s position as a one-stop destination for mid-market businesses looking for a cloud services partner.”

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Brennan IT sees Microsoft Hyper-V support as key to expanding their cloud operations and predicts that at least 15 per cent of their cloud customers will be using Microsoft Hyper V in 2012.

With cloud revenues expected to account for 30 per cent of Brennan IT’s business with in the next 12 months, managing director Dave Stevens says the move is a reflection of the market’s demand for proven cloud solutions and supports the company’s position as a one-stop destination for mid-market businesses looking for a cloud services partner.

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