Building a Collaborative Office of VCIO for Enhanced Customer Management

[00:00:00] Hey MSP Business Schoolers, it is Brian Doyle again with the latest episode of MSP Business School.

[00:00:05] And today's going to be a little bit of a different one and a special one for you.

[00:00:09] I have recently done a webinar about the Office of VCIO and how you can use that concept to

[00:00:15] really expand not only your QBRs and SBRs but really be able to build fractional VCIO in

[00:00:21] VC so teams leveraging the experience of your entire organization. This while you'll hear

[00:00:27] references today from VCIO Toolbox, I really want to emphasize this is a process that is being

[00:00:32] trained there. Not something directly tied to our tool in any of you that are doing your QBRs

[00:00:38] or running your advisory services ad hoc or with one of my competitors can certainly benefit from

[00:00:43] this as well. So with that said let's get over to the podcast. All right good afternoon everyone.

[00:01:00] Today we're really going to focus on the topic that you know I love to chat about. You've got some

[00:01:07] of you that have been coming to training have heard me talk about the Office of VCIO before

[00:01:11] but we're going to talk a little bit more about the Office of VCIO, how it could be a collaborative

[00:01:17] approach to customer management. Now this doesn't mean it's not something you can't leverage

[00:01:23] as a smaller organization it just might mean people are wearing multiple hats but we're

[00:01:28] really taking an approach to build a cohesive team that's acting as a as really a program

[00:01:33] management group and making sure that we're getting the job done for our customers. So today we're

[00:01:39] going to talk a little bit about kind of how that process works and then I'll kind of show you

[00:01:43] some of those updates that some of you might not be aware of in VCIO Toolbox to support the

[00:01:48] approach that we talk about today but as we kick off for anybody that has any questions you can

[00:01:54] put them up into the chat box that has now been opened up so you can communicate throughout the

[00:01:59] meeting with me and if you've got any questions that we want to address during the Ask Me Anything

[00:02:04] session at the end of this call you can do so from the Q&A section. But to kick things off

[00:02:11] we're just going to define the Office of VCIO and really the Office of VCIO is something

[00:02:17] that we started looking at over here at VCIO Toolbox as it's modeled from the Enterprise

[00:02:23] Office of CIO you'll find in a lot of large enterprise organizations Fortune 500 organizations

[00:02:30] that are doing true program and project management on behalf of the organization.

[00:02:36] So what we wanted to do is kind of take some of the principles from there this program

[00:02:41] management piece which is really what we're doing as VCIOs with our customers right?

[00:02:46] We're delivering managed services we're the ones that are managing that as a program

[00:02:50] and then we're extending that our capabilities to provide the trusted advisor services that we do

[00:02:57] and that's going to open up a discussion that we have at the tail end of the call about where

[00:03:01] we might be leaving money on the table and where we can develop some new recurring services.

[00:03:07] But the concept of the Office of VCIO is really to build a team-based approach to the advisory

[00:03:13] process so what does that really mean? Well there's this kind of common misconception out in the

[00:03:18] marketplace that your VCIO does everything right and a lot of times even internally we'll push a

[00:03:25] lot of effort onto the VCIO to maintain account management but really it needs to be a team sport

[00:03:31] and when we look at how we're going to do this it's how do we construct a team where

[00:03:35] everybody has a well-defined role knows exactly what part they play because not everybody has

[00:03:40] to be customer facing in this equation of course and really make sure that we're doing

[00:03:45] what we need to do for each customer and that we're not going to run into you know potential

[00:03:51] relationship risk down the road so you know we'll get into what the different roles are and how we

[00:03:57] approach that for me troll with the customer. The other reason we want to build this approach

[00:04:03] is to get all team members regardless of status in the organization in tune with who our key

[00:04:09] accounts are right? I don't know if you guys have ever experienced it I certainly know

[00:04:13] I did when I was an MSP where you would have some of your lowest level employees causing some of the

[00:04:19] biggest problems within the organization. Now this has got nothing to do with them being good or

[00:04:23] bad employees just sometimes they didn't know how to effectively communicate or they would

[00:04:29] you know mistakenly not recognize who a key client was and this often happens at the help

[00:04:34] desk level you know at least it did in my experience so what we really want to do is get

[00:04:39] all of our team in tune with who the key accounts are that we're working with make sure that they

[00:04:44] understand exactly who they're supposed to be engaged with and when those phone calls come in

[00:04:49] whether it's to the help desk whether it's to your receptionist you know whether it's somewhere

[00:04:53] else we know who those really important accounts are to our livelihood and we make

[00:04:59] sure that we're attending to them appropriately. Now again without sharing that information

[00:05:04] throughout the team one account looks no different than another account right you know to

[00:05:08] those of them that are not engaged we want to get the whole team involved in this

[00:05:12] and as I mentioned earlier if we do this correctly it opens up the door for new revenue opportunity.

[00:05:17] So what is the Office of BCIO model? So the way I like to define it is really you know

[00:05:23] different resources take different places within the work that needs to get done for a customer

[00:05:28] from the advisory standpoint. The BCIO will always be the lead right they're combining the

[00:05:34] business and tech focus here they're going to be the advocate for the customer and their jobs

[00:05:39] to drive oversight of the relationship certainly get feedback from the customer you know on the

[00:05:44] daily or periodically stay engaged with that customer to make sure that there's no relationship

[00:05:49] risk starting to brew or that nothing is falling between the cracks and then ultimately

[00:05:55] drive a story that helps facilitate budgets that the customer takes action on. Let's face it you

[00:06:01] know the QBR was built to be a place to retain customers but also be a win for the cost or for

[00:06:08] the MSP by bringing revenue back to us as well right so we need to make sure that we're taking

[00:06:14] that step. Now the engineer and I'm going to talk a little bit more about this in a moment

[00:06:18] is really the thing that drives the drives the bus and gets the inertia going they are

[00:06:23] the ones responsible for stack alignment in identifying where those gaps are they're going to

[00:06:28] do the assessments that we have as part of this process and if they don't do their work in a

[00:06:33] timely fashion everything in the BCIO sphere whether it's in the office of BCIO model or just

[00:06:40] traditional QBRs tends to slow down to a crawl so we'll get into some strategies around that as

[00:06:46] well. The VC so or the analyst is really focused on security and compliance I think many

[00:06:52] of you have seen the trend to a more compliance focused conversation a more risk-based conversation

[00:06:59] with your customers a lot of it was predicated on the fact that cyber insurance has become more

[00:07:05] difficult to get or you know if you get it making sure your claim gets paid without carve outs

[00:07:11] so the VC so is taking on a much larger role in the conversation and needs to be considered

[00:07:16] as part of this overall account team. The customer success manager that could be the VCIO

[00:07:23] when you know in one right you know but some of my customers have scale where they're building

[00:07:27] out customer success teams to go with kind of the leadership teams that they're providing

[00:07:32] to their clients but we got to collect and analyze that customer feedback and you know

[00:07:36] that's one of the things that I often see neglected in successful customer retention programs

[00:07:42] or you know account management programs we're not getting that periodic feedback from the right

[00:07:48] people we've got those transactional ticket surveys that go out we absolutely collect

[00:07:53] great information from them it really gives us good end user sentiment in a good sense of you

[00:07:58] know what's going on in real time down at that level certainly get out in front of problems

[00:08:02] quicker right but it doesn't tell us where the relationship risk might be brewing at the

[00:08:08] executive level and as you all know and those of you that have attended these trainings before

[00:08:12] you know what I like to call the curse of the great MSP the more we automate and the more we do

[00:08:17] remotely the less we tend to be on site and the less things tend to break and when we start

[00:08:22] running into that situation we really start having a problem with you know with being able

[00:08:28] to stay engaged with our customers they start questioning our value and all of a sudden

[00:08:32] our bill becomes a conversation right so we want to stay in front of that and make sure

[00:08:36] that we're having regular intervals of getting success statics or statistics excuse me back from our

[00:08:43] customers and you know we can do that through CSAT and that promoter score just a simple survey

[00:08:49] and really make sure that we're staying on track at the executive level

[00:08:52] and then finally the executive team right you know that that folks those folks need to be

[00:08:57] the escalation point now this may assume that the the executive team is different than your VCIO

[00:09:02] for those of you that are owner led VCIOs well you are where the buck stops so the executive team

[00:09:08] is not required as much but there are times if you're in a partnership you know this is

[00:09:13] something that I did a lot when me and my partner first started at our MSP and we were

[00:09:18] looking to scale when I was working on my clients he would play as the executive escalation

[00:09:24] point and vice versa when it was his front line customers and in his role I would play the

[00:09:30] executive leadership escalation point so look at your own organization see how you might be able

[00:09:35] to leverage that but you definitely need to have an executive that's a sponsoring this work to help

[00:09:40] helpfully drive the action through these different people in the model and the second part is being

[00:09:45] a the one that can kind of you know get rid of any problems that might be hitting the customer

[00:09:50] at any given time so now we move into the why do you want to build the office of VCIO and

[00:09:56] I've touched upon some of these things right the obvious one is staying for uh close to your customer

[00:10:01] keeping those the whole team engaged with the clients letting them all know what it's all about

[00:10:06] and elevating the visibility to your customer in the gaps that they might be experiencing in

[00:10:11] process policy systems and training you're going to see more and more of the qbr conversation

[00:10:18] starting to focus around risk based objects like policy procedure training concerns as much as you're

[00:10:27] going to talk about infrastructure health and kpis that live around there we all know that the humans

[00:10:32] are the biggest hole in the process when it comes to security and we need to start attending to

[00:10:38] that a little bit more in our qbr's we also want to make sure that we're keeping our customers

[00:10:42] on top of threats innovation out in the marketplace you know changes that might be impacting

[00:10:47] their business you know 18 months ago we were barely talking about AI and I think I saw read on the call

[00:10:53] read is definitely spearheading the uh the the Microsoft co-pilot um you know conversation out

[00:10:59] in the marketplace from his seat so it's really good to uh you know start looking at some of

[00:11:04] these innovative changes that we've got going on and get that out in front of your customer I

[00:11:09] mean what a great excuse to talk to them right come with them with a threat they might need

[00:11:13] to consider or an innovation that they can talk about and you're not just making that call that says

[00:11:17] hey how's things going good great thanks for thanks for taking my call and moving on so we really want

[00:11:23] to start building that as well and you'll notice my little character over there on the right hand

[00:11:27] side think of everything with a customer first approach what would you want to be hearing if

[00:11:33] you were in that end user shoes what do you care about as the customer and not as the msp if

[00:11:40] you do this right you're going to get everything you want as the msp so now we'll talk a little bit

[00:11:45] about the responsibilities of the bcio and as I mentioned they're really the quarterback in this

[00:11:50] whole process we'll stay on that whole football's back which I get really excited about every year

[00:11:55] but we'll get back into that approach of you know the team play right these guys are the

[00:11:59] quarterback they need to stay engaged with the the customer they got to have those regular

[00:12:04] touch points those periodic check-ins and those regular business reviews and again I want everybody

[00:12:10] put the word quarterly and let's really start thinking more about strategic business reviews

[00:12:15] that we're delivering on a cadence that makes the most sense for the customer we want to gather

[00:12:19] information from the client we've got to understand what their stakeholders need if we don't know

[00:12:26] their key initiatives and we don't know their blockers it's going to be tough for us to be

[00:12:30] able to bring innovation or extend the use of systems so we really got to listen to our client

[00:12:35] right that old two ears one mouth conversation we want to drive action the whole point of putting

[00:12:42] the roadmap for us was always to sell more stuff right you know that that's the simple statement

[00:12:47] but really if we do this effectively and we do it the right way with the customer

[00:12:51] we're setting roadmaps and building a budget so they can a stand schedule but be better plan

[00:12:57] for the future and know when they're going to have big expenditure events and if we position

[00:13:02] it and frame it a little bit differently it takes on a whole new consultative value and the

[00:13:07] vcio is really responsible for driving that discussion you know obviously I talked about

[00:13:11] it a few moments ago but that continuing education as new threats are coming out big changes are

[00:13:16] occurring Microsoft programs change things like that we need to stay out in front of our customers

[00:13:22] and then of course we're monitoring the health throughout that process so that's really what

[00:13:26] the vcio needs to be doing whoever's in that role now the engineers like I said earlier

[00:13:31] they're the tail that wags the dog right if they're not doing their assessment work we can't get out

[00:13:36] and see the customers I have a circle of life analogy I like to use when I'm talking about

[00:13:41] the responsibilities of the engineer you know at the end of the day they've got the most important

[00:13:46] part in the qbr process if we're strictly talking business reviews they have to do that assessment

[00:13:52] from that assessment we're going to identify gaps in that environment these are things that

[00:13:56] we got to make our customer aware of and oftentimes drive new projects to our roadmap when those new

[00:14:02] projects get in the roadmap and we take them out to the in the vcio takes them out to the customer

[00:14:07] now they're sharing with the customer where they can make improvements and why they need to make

[00:14:11] these expenditures if done right these become sales sales continues to bring the revenue

[00:14:17] back into the company and that revenue can be used either expand the team so those overworked

[00:14:22] engineers can get some new friends to help them be a little bit less overworked but more importantly

[00:14:28] continue to pay the salaries that you're all earning and potentially those bonuses are commissions

[00:14:33] depending on where you sit in the sphere as well so it's really a circle of life if we're not doing

[00:14:38] those business reviews we run the risk if not of losing the customer at least of not getting

[00:14:43] the revenue on a regular schedule and that can slow down all the downstream processes

[00:14:49] but from a pure what are they so that's why the engineers should be on board hopefully you can

[00:14:53] use that to your advantage out there because some of them do look at this as busy work right you

[00:14:59] know penalty box work i'm not being utilized today so i gotta do one of those assessments

[00:15:03] and we've got to change the game and the complexion on that as part of this team approach as well

[00:15:07] but really the engineer is responsible for identifying those gaps during your assessments

[00:15:12] they want to make sure that we're being contract compliant as well hopefully your gap

[00:15:16] analysis certainly if you're using ours you should be identifying areas within your contract

[00:15:21] that you might not be uh satisfying right because that's an exposure and a hole for you in the

[00:15:26] organization as things bubble up on the service desks or as they're doing implementations bringing

[00:15:32] those issues up to the VCIO and management let us get out in front of that problem right

[00:15:38] unfortunately we work in technology we've all been part of a bad installation or we've had

[00:15:43] service tickets that just can't get fixed and start you know the customer starts going from

[00:15:49] being acceptable of the situation into a little bit louder and then maybe a little unhappy with

[00:15:54] the situation and the biggest thing you can do especially as an engineer is pass that off

[00:15:59] to your folks that are supposed to be the mouthpiece for you a lot of the engineers i work

[00:16:04] with didn't like the conflict right so send that conflict to the people that need to address

[00:16:09] it the VCIOs and the management teams and let us get out in front of it before it becomes a

[00:16:13] big problem we also want to look at identifying standardization opportunities you guys at the you

[00:16:19] know the ones that are at the ground floor those engineers in help desk folks will have a bigger

[00:16:24] understanding of what systems are not meeting the tech stack needs because that's probably where

[00:16:28] they're providing the service as well so we want to make sure that they are identifying that

[00:16:33] and bringing those things and other trends are seeing maybe the same problems happening in some

[00:16:37] serve one of the applications or services they use repeatedly all the time and you know share

[00:16:43] that information with your VCIO the customer success manager again this can be the VCIO playing

[00:16:50] this role but for those that have customer success teams you've got to be sharing that

[00:16:55] information with the VCIO as you stay in tune with the temperature that relationship

[00:16:59] i've seen tandem sales teams where there's a hunter farmer kind of account manager with a

[00:17:04] customer success person inside the office of VCIO and they really you know that person that's on the

[00:17:11] customer success side is really there to really play the day-to-day account manager and only bring

[00:17:15] things to the that salesperson if you will when not when it needs some more direct touch

[00:17:20] so you need those folks staying in tune with the temperature the relationship gauging it over

[00:17:25] time and staying engaged they can keep relevant information in front of the customer i'm seeing

[00:17:30] more and more the msp's i'm working with doing monthly newsletters just to their client base

[00:17:35] with information that's important just to them you know or sending articles right somebody

[00:17:41] you'll see something that makes sense to a dentist organization or something you know a

[00:17:46] a law office in send something specialized out and do little almost mini marketing blasts right

[00:17:51] coming from the customer success team so these are things that you can do to really you know

[00:17:55] get those additional touch points that you might not be getting face to face

[00:17:59] and then obviously they're managing the con that should say contract calendar as well as contact

[00:18:05] calendar of those key accounts you know making sure these business reviews are staying on on pace

[00:18:10] making sure things aren't falling through the crack and and certainly moving forward from there

[00:18:16] now there's a growing need for a VC so resource and certainly this can be somebody

[00:18:21] internal on your team that can be an external resource as well if you do not have that security

[00:18:27] services that you might bring in and engage you know we've got plenty of customers at vcio toolbox

[00:18:33] that have made relationships with external vc so it's to fill this gap but obviously you're

[00:18:38] seeing things really shifting to a security first focus we can't stay one step ahead of the

[00:18:43] hackers and we never will we know that our humans are really the biggest hole in our

[00:18:48] environment and we need somebody staying on top of policy and procedure to make sure what's

[00:18:52] going on in the organization and the way things are set up today really meet the needs for the

[00:18:57] future as time goes by so really the VC so staying in front of those new and emerging threats

[00:19:03] they're coming out there and making sure your stack is doing what it is supposed to be doing

[00:19:08] for your customer and they're looking for any of the gaps there and where we're seeing

[00:19:13] you know emerging opportunities for the VC so it's really around the governance layer for the customer

[00:19:19] you know there's a lot of governance proof we need to make now in our cyber insurance

[00:19:25] applications you know proof that actions like annual reviews of policies that we've got the

[00:19:31] right tools in and that they're being monitored on a continuous basis like vulnerability scanning

[00:19:37] you know those kind of things are more and more becoming a big part of this process and I

[00:19:42] think there's a huge opportunity in the MSP space to really offer governance as a service programs

[00:19:47] where you're becoming that oversight where you're tracking policy procedure things that are getting

[00:19:53] done that need to be done and reported on especially if your customer is regulatory compliant as well

[00:19:59] and this is really something that I'm seeing some of my top performing MSPs converting into

[00:20:04] huge compliance as a service or VC so as a service opportunities so if you're not doing

[00:20:09] that definitely think about it if you don't have those resources come talk to me I can certainly

[00:20:14] align you with other VCIO toolbox users that could potentially support you but you know there's a

[00:20:20] growing need for the VC so to be part of this overall VCIO team and their role as I just

[00:20:26] talked about is really you know staying on top of everything from a security level making sure

[00:20:31] that the stack is meeting the needs of the customer but more importantly meeting the needs

[00:20:35] of the industry at large and then really you know taking it making sure that things don't fall

[00:20:40] through the cracks from a security perspective similar that to what the VCIO is doing and the

[00:20:45] customer success managers are doing from the account based standpoint the executive role

[00:20:51] is really that where the buck stops you've got to have executive buy-in to have a good

[00:20:55] VCIO program I think most of you I see on the call here are part of leadership teams and

[00:21:01] you know that the QBR process goes only as the executive team pushes it there is always a bigger

[00:21:08] fire to undertake somewhere in your business that can derail the business reviews happening

[00:21:13] in a timely fashion engineers were busy before they will always be busy later and as I said

[00:21:19] they sometimes view this as penalty box work so we got to make sure that just the normal fires

[00:21:25] that are the reason we have jobs don't derail the QBR programs so they've got to be the buck

[00:21:30] stops there internally but also externally with the customer you know when the customer

[00:21:36] starts having problems and our team's kind of going back and forth and it gets to this point

[00:21:41] where you can see the customers getting unhappy the VCIO is probably able to make you know

[00:21:46] recommendations or take action to a certain point but when it starts becoming fiduciary

[00:21:52] you know a potential lawsuit those kind of issues or just really a risk to losing the

[00:21:57] customer you got to get an executive involved and that executive's got to be open to picking up

[00:22:03] the phone and making that call too so the customer knows you care recognize that there's a problem

[00:22:09] and if some action needs to be taken maybe a discount maybe a month of free maybe just a

[00:22:15] you know I'm sorry me a culpa those things are occurring as well and they need to be the

[00:22:21] executive to executive liaison in the large organizations too you know in your larger

[00:22:26] organization some of those top level executives if you were in some co-managed environments

[00:22:31] only want to deal with the vetoes of your organization as well so you know certainly

[00:22:36] that's got to be there so you really you know the executive does pay a key role albeit a smaller

[00:22:42] role in the office of VCIO to make sure that the train's chugging to make sure that people

[00:22:46] feel comfortable coming to them open to our policy if you will with problems without any fear

[00:22:52] of retribution or you know penalty on their side you know why did you let it get this far

[00:22:57] we all know technology can escalate in a day right so what is the modern-day TBR

[00:23:03] oh notice we cross out the T I really want you guys starting to think of these as strategic

[00:23:08] business reviews as you move forward you know they are technology business reviews there's

[00:23:13] a huge technology component but we got to get much more strategic in our conversations with

[00:23:17] our customers to really be sticky and play that leadership you know advisor role and in that modern

[00:23:23] day SBR the focus needs to be on the customer so these are this is kind of the five step approach

[00:23:30] that obviously VCIO toolbox lens too but I think it logically lays out the way you can engage

[00:23:36] with your customer in a you know a QBR process but then expanding that out to even build a much

[00:23:42] more fra engaged fractional BCIO program if that's one of your goals now it's enough you know you'll

[00:23:48] notice also it's a continuous circle because everything ties into the part before it and then

[00:23:53] comes right back around so we work as many of you know to build that joint strategic plan with

[00:23:58] our customer really we want to work with them to understand what are the key objectives they're

[00:24:02] going after in the obstacles in the way of success and those things become markers that we can

[00:24:08] tie our projects and services to and really help the customer see the business outcome they can expect

[00:24:13] from the projects but before we can build any projects we have to do our it operations analysis

[00:24:19] which is that gap assessment right where our engineers come into play there we're looking for

[00:24:24] those gaps in process people system and security and from those gaps we're going to make recommendations

[00:24:31] in conjunction with that gap assessment we're doing an asset management process I like to call it

[00:24:37] asset governance here as we continue to expand the integrations coming into BCIO toolbox and the

[00:24:43] reason for that is we're not just looking at product lifecycle components but if you're using the

[00:24:48] existing vulnerability scanners that we connect with and some of the ones that we've got upcoming

[00:24:52] you're going to be able to bring that vulnerability scoring into it as well so we can show perfectly

[00:24:57] healthy or perfectly life cycle ready assets right ones that are not expired out but still

[00:25:03] show that they've got significant problems maybe they're you know way behind them patching or

[00:25:08] have application patches that nobody thought about that have to be attended to and these

[00:25:13] could be areas of exploit for your environment so we're really looking at more of an asset governance

[00:25:17] conversation probably bigger than the life cycle these days since a lot of what we have with

[00:25:22] the move to the cloud with most of our folks is really our end point so that's a huge part

[00:25:28] that we're looking at something we've introduced into the BCIO toolbox process but many of you

[00:25:34] were doing potentially outside of that was risk management and what we mean by risk management

[00:25:39] is hey great we've identified those gaps during our assessment but now we want to look at those gaps

[00:25:45] and go hey what's the impact to the business and what's the likelihood of this happening

[00:25:50] we really want to quantify those risks and then we can bring them into a centralized risk

[00:25:55] register this was native in our GRC system for quite some time but we only extended it out to be

[00:26:02] able to be leveraged in the QBR this summer because many of our GRC clients are going yo I want to bring

[00:26:07] those risks in from the other side as well and it totally made sense that we want to track those

[00:26:12] risks that might not get covered in the security assessment i.e infrastructure concerns

[00:26:17] application concerns and bring them into the risk matrix as well so we now have a

[00:26:22] risk register within the system but even if you weren't utilizing the system you can quantify and

[00:26:27] identify those risks so you can put a really nice prioritization for the customer again we're there

[00:26:32] to guide them, sherpa them and help them make more and more confident decisions that don't rely on

[00:26:38] blind faith and we can do that by quantifying the risk now all those steps feed into building

[00:26:43] a budget roadmap right we've identified gaps in the projects and services that might come out

[00:26:48] of that we've listened to our customers and built our strategic plan so we know any new

[00:26:54] new initiatives that are going out there and you know we can get those aligned to the strategic

[00:27:00] plan and ultimately you know that budget and roadmap really gives us an opportunity to really

[00:27:06] have a more consultative based conversation with our customer we can show how things tie

[00:27:11] to the strategic plan we can show them how it ties to the risk management plan

[00:27:15] we're able now in BCIO toolbox to be able to show risk and impact right there I mean excuse me

[00:27:22] strategic alignment and impact right there within the recommendation section when we're using the

[00:27:28] meeting and presentation view so these are all good things to really tie that conversation

[00:27:33] together and make sure the customer understands all these items that I was just talking about

[00:27:39] that I didn't pop up here for you but you know hopefully that gives you a sense of kind

[00:27:43] of where the modern day QB TBR looks like and that risk review is really just giving a very visual

[00:27:48] view of where risk lives for your customer people are visual our business folk on the other side

[00:27:54] of the table tend to not speak in technical terms oftentimes and we want them to understand

[00:27:59] the risk that they're facing so what you're seeing there's a simple industry standard heat map

[00:28:04] view of where risk lives impacts and likelihoods are being identified and then in this case

[00:28:10] you're just seeing how many risks live in each one of those boxes but by adding those probabilities

[00:28:14] you can have a very simple story with your customer hey you know our goal is obviously

[00:28:18] to get as much of that risk to the bottom left hand corner as quickly as we can and we want

[00:28:24] to make sure that we're taking our top priority risks and addressing those first so those things

[00:28:29] you're seeing up there in the red boxes those are the ones we really want to take care of

[00:28:33] first if budget allows and then we'll move downstream so it really gives you an opportunity

[00:28:38] to leverage this risk concept that's native to the GRC conversation and bring it into that business

[00:28:43] focus again under the office of VCI O now once you get all this put together as I mentioned a few

[00:28:50] moments ago you're correlating that data to drive decisions you're taking all that information

[00:28:55] about impact and likelihoods that you identified in risk management tying it together with the

[00:29:00] budget and the roadmap and then feeding that back to show the outcomes the customer can expect

[00:29:05] from your strategic plan when you can tell a customer where risk lives and what business

[00:29:12] outcomes they're going to get from that process we have seen and spoken with our customers and

[00:29:16] what we're hearing is it cuts down the sales friction and basically makes these deals come

[00:29:23] in 30 to 60 days earlier than they traditionally were coming in previously and that's because

[00:29:28] we've taken all the mystery out of the project the customer knows well in advance how much

[00:29:34] it's going to cost at least a directional view of how much it's going to cost they know exactly

[00:29:39] what the risk is to their business and they can make an educated decision if that's a risk

[00:29:43] they're willing to accept or there's that's a risk risk they want to fix and then ultimately

[00:29:48] how it ties back to the strategic plan gives them a sense of what business outcomes that

[00:29:52] project's contributing to and they can look at those business outcomes and determine the value

[00:29:57] back to the organization so you know this really brings everything to a center empowers even some

[00:30:04] of the most junior VCIOs now to have those business based discussions and this whole concept of the

[00:30:10] office of VCIO with executive escalation empowers those junior VCIOs to be feel more confident

[00:30:17] because they know that they're not just sitting there as a team of one trying to communicate

[00:30:22] to somebody that they feel is much senior to them what's going on they know that they've

[00:30:26] got a team of professionals that we're backing them and getting them to that decision and obviously

[00:30:31] that's something that they can share and showcase during a meeting with the client as well now all

[00:30:37] of this gives the opportunity to get this to the next level of you know recurring opportunities

[00:30:45] everything we talked about today might be driving the SBR to a degree but you can see very quickly

[00:30:51] there's areas that you can expand upon go deeper and start looking at building fractional VCIO or

[00:30:57] VC so offerings and these offerings are creating new recurring revenue my top performing MSPs again

[00:31:05] that have built VC so programs over the last 18 months two years are getting anywhere from

[00:31:11] $1500 to about $5000 in new recurring revenue through building out either a beast fractional

[00:31:18] VCIO or VC so program more so probably on the VC so side the fractional VCIO candidly does play

[00:31:24] a little bit better in co-managed situations than it does sometimes or at least in situations where

[00:31:30] their staff that do IT work but the fractional VC so for almost any business that you're

[00:31:36] engaging in you know again our marketplace that's small to mid-sized they don't often

[00:31:41] have CISOs on their team and this gives us the opportunity to step in there and do right