Richard speaks to Mark Matthews, owner and CEO of Bromsgrove based MSP, ATG IT to discuss the benefits of collaboration and outsourcing, and what their partner relationship with Continuum looks like.
An Interview with Mark Matthews
I’ve known Mark Matthews for a long time now and became great friends a number of years ago when our mutual friend, Phylip Morgan introduced us. Phylip, of course is the Managing Director of Continuum, EMEA, and I think it’s fair to say Phylip has been a great influence on both of us.
Mark and I have a shared belief in being Go Givers, which forms the basis of everything Mark does. In fact he runs his life on the book, The Go Giver by Bob Burg. (Listen to my interview with Bob Burg here). With the lessons learnt in this book, Mark is all for collaboration and doesn’t expect anything back, but knows working in a Go Giver way, it’ll come back some other way. He acknowledges we all can’t know everything, so at some time we’re going to have to collaborate with somebody.
Collaboration has been a big part of Mark’s business and it’s played a big part in the success of ATG. This includes collaborating and outsourcing with partners such as Continuum on their master MSP model, utilising their back up side as well as their NOC (Network Operations Center) and SOC (Security Operations Center). Outsourcing to Continuum has meant ATG has been able to free up engineers, re train them and allow them to focus on more projects. It’s also meant they can take on much larger contracts that they would have otherwise been unable to approach.
Mark explains that there are 4 factors in choosing to outsource this type of work to the likes of Continuum instead of choosing to build things it in house at ATG:
- Specialisation in certain areas, you don’t want to be the master of nothing.
- The skill set to do these things, training is not cheap.
- The cost to build your own NOC would be ineffective
- The time to do it. It’s such a fast moving world, by the time you’ve developed it, you’d have to start again.
It’s about collaborating with people that are better at doing the job than you are and actually admitting that’s the case and dealing to your own strengths.
I often get asked about the challenges of on boarding outsourced partners. Mark also shares some words of wisdom about the lessons he has learnt and what needs to be in place before jumping in with two feet.
Mentioned in This Episode
- The Go Giver, by Bob Burg
- Continuum
- White Paper: SLI Report
- ConnectWise
- CompTia
Get in touch with Mark
- Twitter: @thecrispguy
- LinkedIn: Mark Matthews
- Email: ma***********@at****.uk
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Richard Tubb is one of the best-known experts within the global IT Managed Service Provider (MSP) community. He launched and sold his own MSP business before creating a leading MSP media and consultancy practice. Richard helps IT business owner’s take back control by freeing up their time and building a business that can run without them. He’s the author of the book “The IT Business Owner’s Survival Guide” and writer of the award-winning blog www.tubblog.co.uk
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