Packet A is for bookkeeping, packet B is for warehouse management, packet C is for relations management and packet D for managing agendas and e-mail traffic. In the area of IT, MKB companies are beginning to look like a patch-work quilt. Because all these solutions also do not communicate with each other and keeping them up-to-date is costly, there is a great deal of frustration within the business world about the current IT landscape, says Joop van Voorthuijsen of The IT Channel Company. High time for a new approach: Since recently, OneBizz is offering integrated support of all important departments and processes within MKB organisations.
Why this new branch on The IT Channel Company’s tree?
“There are some great packets on the market but they only do one thing. You can support your CRM with it, full stop. You can do your bookkeeping with it, full stop. You can manage your inventories with it, full stop. But the way businesses see it, these are all loose, partial solutions for what in fact is one integrated challenge: operating your business as efficiently as possible. If this is the challenge, you must then offer one integrated solution, or rather, one IT environment that supports all of the departments and processes within an organisation all at once. This concerns both internally and externally focused processes as well as structured and unstructured data. This is precisely what OneBizz does, while liberating MKB-ers from unwanted IT tasks in the process.
Via the TICC operating company QBS Group you are already a value-added distributer of Microsoft software. Why this new operating company alongside the current activities?
“OneBizz really wants to do something new. We’re not going to sell our end-clients software through our partners anymore, but instead offer a complete standardised IT solution as a service. You pay per employee per day - let’s say, approximately the price of a couple of cups of good coffee. In return, you receive every aspect of high-quality IT support which we arrange for each employee, usually in advance, depending on the position. So, you also only pay for the functionality that is required, and only for the employees that are actually working. The “heart” of OneBizz is formed by Microsoft Office 365, which includes such applications as Outlook, SharePoint, Skype for Business and Yammer, and if desired, can be supplemented with CRM and/or ERP. What’s more, the entire solution functions from the Microsoft Azure cloud. This enables every employee, with any device and anywhere in the world, to collaborate with colleagues. OneBizz will, of course, also be offered via the partners of QBS.”
Lots of companies are still afraid of cloud solutions due to safety aspects and privacy. Won’t that be an obstacle?
“We’ve noticed that this fear is gradually subsiding. Microsoft makes a priority of privacy and security and is able to offer technical and legal assurances that correspond well with existing legislation. For this very reason, the De Nederlandsche Bank (Dutch Central Bank) has now concluded that a company that uses such Microsoft online services as Office 365 meets all the legal privacy requirements.”
Speaking of Microsoft: it is known as a “technology push” company that pushes, as it were, new software and applications onto the market. Is OneBizz going to push its own weight on top of that, too?
“No, the converse is actually true: our goal is to enable new solutions for the average MKB organisation. Most companies that work with Office 365 only utilise ten to twenty percent of all the possibilities. Or rather: a large part of the possibilities to work more efficiently and more innovatively already exist, but are not being used. OneBizz is going to translate the new possibilities into solutions that MKB organisations can use immediately. Hence our slogan: “Goodbye frustration, hello inspiration!” IT should be fun again and above all, inspire us to develop new, more efficient ways of working.”
OneBizz has been active for one year now. How is it going and what does the future hold?
We, indeed, started last year in the Netherlands with client-focused events and were able to convince some of our first clients who are, by the way, extremely pleased with the services we offer. Because we are already active with QBS in fourteen different countries with a total of over three hundred channel partners, we are able to roll out this OneBizz concept quite rapidly. I expect that, as early as this summer, we will be active in Denmark, the UK, Spain and Germany partly with existing partners who are “cloud minded” just like us, and partly with new young partners that were “born in the cloud.”
Many of the classical suppliers of services still earn a lot money through consultancy hours required in order to implement and maintain the packets. If they step over to OneBizz all at once, this part of their business model will fall away. What does OneBizz think about this?
“It’s true that this could be a difficult transition. That is why we currently guide these companies in the cloud transformation towards the incubator model: alongside your regular business, establish a new team of young people who are “born in the cloud“, and from there, you slowly expand a new software-as-a-service provision. And if our channel partners are really at their wits’ end, we can also supply them with new talent through our own Young Professional Academy. One thing is sure: standing still is not an option. This is the future of IT.”
