MSP 501 Profile: ASK Aligns Customers with Technology

Company Name: ASK
Company MSP 501 Rank: 85 on Hot 101
CEO: Mike Maddox
Headquartered: Lansing, MI

Primary Services:

• Managed IT services
• Managed security
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• IT professional services

Twitter: @justasknet

ASK, the Lansing, Michigan-based MSP that specializes in security, wants you to get back to basics with three business fundamentals.

To wit, the company invites customers to enlist their help with protecting cash flow, increasing staff productivity and growing their businesses. If offers a series of workshops on these topics to help clients get – or stay – on the right foot.

This year, ASK landed on our brand-new list – the Hot 101 – dedicated to companies evolving and growing their MSP businesses. It’s part of our MSP 501 program.

Supporting more than 100 companies’ and organizations’ technology needs in Michigan, ASK has been instrumental in helping clients through the COVID-19 crisis. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer designated ASK a critical infrastructure business.

We caught up with CEO Mike Maddox, who offers a deep dive into how ASK helps customers.

Channel Futures: What is one thing you wish vendors would do that they don’t?

Mike Maddox: We believe that technology’s value for business is only derived from its ability to deliver results in the form of increased profits, reduced inefficiency and enhanced collaboration. Based on this belief, we work with all of our clients on a Technology Alignment Process which maps their technology road map to their short- and long-term business strategy. It would be great if technology vendors took the same approach to their products and solutions. Technology should not be a transactional purchase. It needs to be bought based on a carefully planned and measured road map which builds efficiency over time.

ASK’s Mike Maddox

The Technology Alignment Process involves a deep understanding of the client’s pain points and business strategy. From there, a technology plan can be built with a road map for short, medium, and long term. This road map needs to be implemented and evaluated as conditions change and ultimately measured against expected and actual ROI.

Vendors would benefit from presenting their products and solutions in terms of how they fit into the larger ecosystem within the client environment and how they deliver ROI. Too often they are presented as point-in-time products and solutions that simply answer a specific need or needs. That forces a transactional approach which only serves to commoditize their offering.

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

MM: In 2019, our leadership team decided to implement EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). This program is based on the work done by Gino Wickman and described in his book. “Traction.” Our move to EOS allowed us to foundationally change our organizational dynamics to achieve new levels of efficiency and lay the foundation for future explosive growth.

The decision to move to an EOS model was based on our rapid growth from a small IT company with a handful of employees to a sizeable entity with multiple “moving parts.” What worked when we were very small was no longer working as well. Our vision was to continue the rapid growth of the past. and we knew that we would …