D&H is building an expansive set of outsourced professional services for its North American SMB resellers.
The new offerings, which include integration services, endpoint managed services, and a variety of project-specific services, have been rolling out this year and will continue arriving in 2021, according to Jason Bystrak, formerly the distributor’s vice president of cloud computing and now in charge of D&H’s recently formed Cloud and Services Business Unit.
Scaling up the company’s previously available white glove and integration services program, which provides pre-delivery assistance with hardware-related tasks like asset tagging and laser etching, is a key part of the unfolding initiative. According to Bystrak, partners utilize those resources to close gaps in their skill set, to add short-term capacity in response to heavy order volumes, and to free up resources for strategic, higher-margin activities.
“That takes costs out of their business, because then we can go and ship the integrated product right to their end client on their behalf,” he says.
Onsite white glove and integration offerings include assessment and device enrollment services. Resellers with customers in the education vertical are especially in need of help in the latter area, Bystrak notes. “They’re getting schools that need 5,000, 10,000, even bigger orders of Chromebooks taken care of immediately, and they just don’t have the capacity, but we do.”
Also available to D&H partners now through Bystrak’s team is a lineup of assessment, migration, and installation services for one-time projects in markets like Pro AV, e-sports, cloud computing, data center or network infrastructure, and security. Partners can draw on those offerings to meet client needs outside their normal service geography and to augment their in-house technical capabilities.
“Maybe they just don’t have experience in e-sports, for example,” Bystrak says. “We can go in and help win a project.”
An additional set of white label managed services for device management, device security, infrastructure management, infrastructure security, and help desk support will arrive next spring. Each comes with a clearly defined SLA and fixed pricing that partners can mark up 20 to 40% or more, according to Bystrak. “They should be making healthy margin off of those services,” he says.
D&H expects VARs and solution providers with little or no managed services know-how of their own to find outsourced management appealing. “This is a quick way for them to really get into that business, because they know they need to, without having to make all of those investments in technical resources,” Bystrak says.
MSPs looking to scale up a growing practice quickly or shut down their help desk are another potential market. “They can consume our service and have those technicians doing other higher-level services,” Bystrak notes.
D&H has plans to let partners combine managed services with PCs sold through its device-as-a-service program and products like Microsoft 365 listed on its cloud marketplace. Bundling hardware with cloud services is already producing rich returns for D&H and its resellers, according to Bystrak.
“We’re working really closely with OEMs like HP and Lenovo and Dell, etc., to build these attach motions and really help customers deliver a total solution,” he says. “That’s helping to accelerate our systems business and our cloud and services business all at the same time, and partners are benefiting.”
Starting early next year, partners selling such bundles will be able to apply OS and other licenses to PCs before shipment via Microsoft’s Windows Autopilot program.
Tiffany Ward, D&H’s recently hired director of professional services, heads up the company’s solution expert team, which will add headcount next year.
According to Bystrak, the plan to ramp up professional services was first hatched in 2019. It became even more relevant this year, however when the sudden move to remote work arrangements in response to the coronavirus pandemic left channel pros in desperate need of services help.
“Demand met the plan, so it’s kind of magical in that way,” Bystrak says.
Demand for cloud solutions has been strong this year thanks to office closures and work-from-home arrangements as well, Bystrak adds. Cloud revenue, in fact, rose 87% in the first half of D&H’s fiscal 2021, which began May 1st.
“It’s been a really, really solid year,” Bystrak says.
D&H also saw device-as-a-service and Pro AV revenue climb 74% and 55%, respectively, in the first half of the current fiscal year. Overall VAR revenue was up close to 25%.
