4-page Partner Case Study - Posted 11/17/2008
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Online Services Create Ongoing Revenue Stream while Delivering Customer Value
Arctic Information Technology is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that offers end-to-end Microsoft business solutions to organizations in Alaska and throughout North America. Arctic IT recognized that many local organizations did not have the resources, infrastructure or staffing required to support on-premises collaborative technologies such as Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server and Microsoft Exchange Server. This barrier dropped with the introduction of the Microsoft Online Services and the Business Productivity Online Suite, which enable Arctic IT to provide enterprise-class functionality in an online, subscription-based form that reduces or eliminates the need for an on-premises infrastructure. As a result, Arctic IT can deliver business value to its small and mid-sized business client companies, while gaining new customers and creating a new recurring revenue stream.
Situation
For more than eight years, Arctic Information Technology has successfully provided end-to-end solutions based on business systems and applications from Microsoft Dynamics® to Alaskan companies. According to President Steve Dike, Arctic IT is driven by its sharply focused mission statement: “Deliver Business Value.”
However, the company’s executives realized that there were many businesses to which they could not deliver value. Arctic IT offered solutions that required an up-front infrastructure investment, as well as a sophisticated staff for administration and maintenance, and many Alaskan companies had neither the financial nor human resources to support them.
One such company was Staser Consulting Group (SCG). Mark Mathis, Account Manager at Arctic IT explains, “We talked to Staser Consulting Group a year ago about deploying Microsoft Exchange Server—including remote Web access to email and synchronization to handheld devices—and SharePoint, but it wasn’t a good fit for them because of the infrastructure investment that would have been required.” To companies such as SCG, enterprise-class collaboration services were simply out of their reach.
To deliver value to a company such as SCG, Arctic IT needed another approach, one it found in the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services.
Solution
The Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services is a subscription-based offering that makes Microsoft Exchange Online, Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Office Communications Online, and Microsoft SharePoint Online available to end users over the Internet. Microsoft hosts and manages the servers that support these offerings, while a partner such as Arctic IT provides local support and value-added services. Because Microsoft maintains the servers, end customers do not have to invest in the hardware or onsite support resources required to run such a solution. Instead, customers pay Microsoft a monthly fee based on the number of users accessing the services.
Now Arctic IT can offer its clients the enterprise-class collaboration services they have been seeking—including desktop and mobile e-mail, calendaring and contacts, instant messaging, presence, audio/video conferencing, shared workspaces and Web-conferencing applications—all supported by financially-backed service level agreements that promise high availability and high reliability. Arctic IT’s clients gain all the advantages afforded by these powerful collaboration tools, with virtually none of the overhead.
Not only do Arctic IT executives feel that Microsoft Online Services offer an ideal solution for larger clients that have dispersed workforces with remote or deskless workers, but also for small companies that do not have a centralized, traditional brick-and-mortar operation. “It allows the company to bring those folks into the corporate conversation and participate equally with traditional computer users with very low barriers to entry,” says Mathis.
Finding the Right Fit for Staser Consulting Group
When executives at Arctic IT learned about the Business Productivity Online Suite, they felt it could be the ideal solution for SCG, a company with 12 employees that focuses on helping the oil and gas sector maximize business profit. “Staser Consulting Group is a very diversified and dynamic consulting practice that has brought together people who are industry professionals in their fields, where the total is greater than the sum of its parts,” comments Mathis. One reason SCG was excited when Arctic IT introduced the solution was that its workforce is mobile and dispersed. Its personnel need to connect easily and reliably, but an on-premises collaboration solution was out of reach. With a low cost-of-entry and Arctic IT providing local support, SCG jumped at the op¬portunity afforded by the Business Productivity Online Suite.
Today, SCG uses Exchange Online for e-mail and calendaring, as well as SharePoint Online for document management and collaboration. SCG uses Microsoft Office Live Meeting for remote conferencing and collaboration with its mobile workforce that is located from the North Slope of Alaska down to Atlanta, Georgia. These productivity tools will help Staser Consulting Group provide leading-edge services to its own customer base.
“If we didn’t offer the Microsoft Business Productivity Online Suite, I’m not sure Staser Consulting Group would be engaging with us to support their communication and collaboration needs, nor would we have the opportunity to provide additional services,” states Mathis. “Microsoft Online Services enables us to provide the communications platform they desire and expand our business offerings to support customers who wouldn’t be able to take advantage of traditional network infrastructure communication solutions using Exchange Server or Small Business Server.”
Benefits
The Business Online Productivity Suite enables Arctic IT to bring enterprise-class software to companies with as few as five users. And this translates into benefits for both Arctic IT and its clients.
Expanding Reach by Extending Offerings
Microsoft Online Services is opening new market opportunities for Arctic IT. “The Online Services have enabled us to expand our business model and thus deliver business value to more clients than we would be able to do so otherwise,” says Mathis.
Arctic IT customers now have the benefits of a rock-solid enterprise-class solution, without having to divert their resources from their core business. Any customization or service the client might need, such as creating workflows and customized document repositories in SharePoint, is provided by a trusted partner that understands their business and can add value to the standard solution.
“We pride ourselves on establishing long-term relationships with our customers,” says Mathis, “and we have to continue to look for opportunities and new ways that we can deliver value to our customers. Microsoft Online Services provides a viable way to extend our offerings.”
Increasing Revenue by Opening a New Revenue Stream
Partners reselling Microsoft Online Services receive an annual recurring revenue stream from Microsoft for the length of time their client’s contract is in place. So for every Arctic IT customer that signs up for these online services, Arctic IT receives income—while incurring virtually no overhead.
“Microsoft Online Services will allow us to add a significant level of revenue to our bottom line—with relatively little risk and a very reasonable level of effort,” says Mathis.
Arctic IT is looking forward to adding value by helping its customers take advantage of SharePoint Online. “Our customers have a great deal of optimism and excitement about SharePoint Online,” explains Mathis. “So for us to be able to deliver a SharePoint solution to a business irrespective of its size—without having to require an investment in server infrastructure and just pay a low monthly rate to gain access to that—is a very, very exciting prospect.” Arctic IT will also gain additional revenue by being able to support its customers in the use of Exchange Online.
Increasing Business Velocity by Shortening Sales Cycles
Reducing time to solution benefits both Arctic IT and its customers. With Microsoft Online Services, Arctic IT can close deals more quickly because there is no lengthy hardware design, procurement, or configuration process. Development teams can perform value-added migration, customization, and configuration services remotely—which according to Microsoft research can lower costs to a value-added service provider by as much as 40 percent. Moreover, because Arctic IT does not have to manage hardware setup and provisioning—Microsoft does that—it can redirect its resources toward creating higher-value strategic services for its clients. This enables Arctic IT to complete projects more quickly or take on additional projects without increasing headcount.
Mathis estimates that it could take 40 to 50 hours to configure and deploy Microsoft Exchange Server in-house for a client, yet a client could be sending and receiving mail using Exchange Online in as little as 6 hours. That translates into shorter sales cycles in acquiring new customers or repurposing manpower that might be dedicated to that 40-50 hour time commitment.
Staser Consulting Group was not only attracted by the fact that it did not have to make the infrastructure investment, but also by the fact that Arctic IT could get the solution up and running and get all their people connected so quickly.
“With Microsoft Online Services, most of the technical requirements for deployment are addressed within the solution itself, which allows us to engage with more customers and have them deployed quickly,” says Mathis.
Delivering Value to Customers with Virtually No Business Risk
“The primary value of the Business Productivity Online Suite is that it makes enterprise-level software available to companies that may not have the infrastructure or the capital to make large infrastructure investments,” says Mathis.
“For Staser Consulting Group to be able to make use of a solution that provides all of its users with enterprise-grade messaging and collaboration services—without needing to have a central office, power protection or physical security to protect a server infra-structure supporting Exchange Server, SharePoint Services, or Live Meeting—is fantastic. That will have a high impact on their success,” says Mathis.
It is important to Arctic IT that its customers succeed, which means providing solutions that pose minimal risk. Mathis explains, “In terms of risk, we feel confident in offering the Business Productivity Online Suite to our clients because we have Microsoft standing behind it. It’s clear that Microsoft has done an excellent job of engineering this platform. We have not been able to identify another solution that offers collaboration and communication on the same level or of the same caliber. This means our customers will be building their critical business capability around a proven solution.”
“Microsoft Online Solutions provide tremendous value,” concludes Dike, “and enable our clients to take advantage of world-class technology in a very cost-effective manner, with very low risk, and very high return.”
Microsoft Online Services
Microsoft Online Services is a business-class communications and collaboration software offering delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with partners. These services help make it easier for customers to rapidly and cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies, and are designed for rapid deployment to provide customers with streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security.
For IT staff, Microsoft Online Services helps reduce the burden of performing routine IT management tasks such as installation, provisioning, ongoing maintenance, patches, updates, and upgrades, making it possible for them to spend more time on initiatives that move the business forward. These services are backed by strong SLAs and are designed to meet the regulatory compliance and reliability needs of enterprise customers. On a technical level, the services boast the sophistication and reliability that customers expect from Microsoft, which continues to invest heavily in building data centers to support these services.
For more information, visit: www.microsoft.com/online
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Arctic Information Technology, Inc products and services, call (907) 261-9500 or visit its Web site at: www.arcticit.com
