MSP 501 Profile: Ashton Technology Solutions on Avoiding the ‘Race to the Bottom’

Company Name: Ashton Technology Solutions
MSP 501 Rank: 414
Sales & Marketing Manager: Jim Abbott
Headquartered: Beachwood, OH
Primary Services:

• Managed IT
• Security solutions
• Backup and disaster recovery
• Cloud computing
• Compliance, audit and diligence
• Project services
• Wireless networking

Twitter: @AshtonSolutions

Go to the Ashton Technology Solutions website and you get a quick glimpse into the company’s philosophy. “It’s 2020. It should just work.”

No doubt we all feel that way, but getting that message across to customers is of utmost importance to Ashton.

Ashton provides managed and co-managed IT services, data security, IT project management, strategic consulting and more. Its clients are small and midsize businesses in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. The company prides itself in taking care of customers. As one testimonial on the Ashton Technology Solutions website reads, “I don’t have to worry about anything … you guys take care of it.”

We asked sales and marketing manager Jim Abbott about COVID-19 business challenges and the company’s growth. We also touched on how Ashton turned a nightmare client into a dream.

Channel Futures: What new opportunities and challenges came with the global COVID-19 pandemic?

Ashton Technology Solutions’ Jim Abbott

Jim Abbott: New challenges came at us in the form of marketing, sales, client account management, and of course, operations. From a sales and marketing perspective, we felt the need to walk a very fine line between reminding prospects that we were still alive and still conducting business, while not trying to capitalize on a bad situation. As such, we basically turned off our sales efforts (who wants to be viewed as the ambulance chaser, trying to take advantage of our peers who may have dropped the ball in terms of service?), and focused solely on educational content that we hoped would ease a tough situation.

This was a great opportunity for us to get to the marketing tasks that normally get pushed aside (website updates, increased SEO efforts, and putting out tons of great content). The pandemic also quickly reminded us of the need to keep in touch with our existing clients, making sure that their businesses were running smoothly, technology was doing everything possible to ease the transition to work from home, and that, as humans, they were holding up during rough times.

From an operational perspective, we were excited to face the challenge of a home-based workforce (our own), and tested our capabilities for the week prior to the Ohio lockdown taking effect. Fortunately, our own business continuity preparations made for an easy transition, thereby allowing a similarly easy transition for our client base. Our support desk load increased by 100% over the first two weeks of lockdown, but then tailed off significantly. More importantly, for our entire client base (with a few exceptions in retail and food service), it was business as usual, either at home or in the office. “Days outstanding” actually decreased significantly, as clients paid their bills more quickly, due to our ability to keep their businesses running smoothly. This was indeed a huge opportunity to prove our worth, and we did just that!

CF: What was the single biggest technology or business decision that drove your company’s growth in 2019? How did it do so?

JA: Ironically (considering that this is the MSP 501), our biggest business decision was to begin moving away from the idea of being an MSP. When Ashton was founded in 1994, we were a break-fix organization, and as we moved into the mid 2000’s, we adopted the MSP model. In early 2019, however, we realized that what an “MSP” offers in terms of standard solutions (antivirus, backups, monitoring, patching, help desk) are all table stakes for being in this industry. In Greater Cleveland alone, there are well over 150 businesses that consider themselves managed IT service providers.

Many of these providers claim to be the best at what they do (“premier,” “leading,” “No. 1, “and the synonyms go on — just look at their homepages), and for a “consumer” (the business doing the buying), it’s hard for them to differentiate between amateurs and professionals. We have moved our focus to next-generation security solutions (data and network security), as well as compliance and business continuity. We still offer those table stakes necessary to be in this business, but we now differentiate ourselves with solutions that aren’t …