A Saskatchewan-based managed services provider (MSP) is reaping the fruits of its investments in predictive analytics and gaining a foothold in the Western Canadian market as a result.
WBM Technologies Inc., a long-time MSP – and a CDN Top 100 Solution Provider – recently followed up last month’s opening of the YQR Infrastructure Operations Centre in Regina, Sask. with the acquisition of Ricoh Canada’s operations in Manitoba. It bumps the company’s headcount up to 314, an impressive increase since 2011 when they employed just over 100, according to Brett Bailey, WBM vice-president. But it’s Bailey’s explanation of how WBM’s managed print business continues to improve with the help of predictive analytics, a strategy that extends to its three other core practice areas, that properly articulates the company’s recent success.
“We’re now looking at sensors and analytics to understand how to remote manage these devices, track their vibration patterns or their temperatures and respond to incidents that are not even coming from people anymore, but from the devices themselves.”
Forrester says business using predictive analytics are growing at an average of more than 30 per cent each year and are on track to earn $1.8 trillion by 2021 over their uninformed competitors. A WBM partner from B.C. gets nearly 20 per cent of its alerts about faulty equipment from the machines themselves. It’s a significant shift for the partner – the Provincial Health Services Authority in B.C., specifically – indicated Bailey, and allows them to significantly reduce workflow interruptions. It’s a huge win for any organization, but especially for one that deals with literal life and death situations.
There’s a growing sense among an increasing number of CEOs that the enormous repository of data in their possession isn’t being used properly, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, suggested WBM president JoeAnne Hardy.
“It shows that customers have a renewed sense of curiosity around what’s possible,” said Hardy.
There’s also a greater push from customers to unlock the full capabilities of a service running in their organization, such as Office 365. No longer is the basic rollout of the service enough – customers want to know exactly how it can be applied across the business.
“I would say some of the providers out there are just checking all the boxes and suggesting the job is complete. But from our perspective, we know there is more that can be done, and it’s mostly about direct engagement with the end user and helping them understand technology’s role in the business.”
One of the MSP’s recent implementations in the last two years has supported this statement, and changed how WBM delivers technologies to its enterprise customers, according to Bailey. End user experiencing engineering teams are deployed to clients that are interested in better understanding a certain product or service in the context of their business.
“It’s now a lot less of a technology project and a lot more of a people project,” said Bailey.
