This has never happened before. You are operating your business in a time when something is happening that is so momentous it has never happened before. Jim Blasingame identifies it as an epochal marketplace shift that’s causing the 10,000-year-old Age of the Seller to be replaced by the Age of
Welcome back to the final installment in our blog series from Joel Harris, Understanding Variable Costs is Wildly Important for Your Integration Business. How do you handle routine seasonal variability, peak demand, and one-time opportunities in your integration business? Most integration businesses I work with have a hired permanent
Welcome to the second installment in Navigate’s guest blog series from Joel Harris, Understanding Variable Costs is Wildly Important for Your Integration Business. In Part 1, Joel shared his experience of using a variable cost structure to transform an acquisition from losses into profit. Since then, he has applied
Integrators regularly ask Navigate for advice about how to grow their services revenue. It often goes something like this, “How do we start this, because right now we have a break fix business? We get calls from our clients and we are very reactive and we take care of them,
Integrators are making the shift from a reactive service model to a proactive support model There has been a lot of discussion in the integrator community about best practices for developing services and support revenue, and how to embrace a recurring revenue model. Today, our own Steve Riley is
Is the systems integration industry ready to fully acknowledge the value of women in project management, and support their growth? I hope so, because whether the job is filled by women or men, it’s time to shift the paradigm of project manager from a through-the-ranks, glorified technical lead (someone who
Who should be responsible for the estimating process? One of the issues Navigate often addresses with customer is the estimating process. Today, our own Steve Riley is joined by Tofiq Indawala, Director of Product Management at Solutions360, to discuss who should be responsible for the estimate. “This is a conversation
What Should You Do When Customers Have Unrealistic Expectations? In the middle of 1999, I was a regional sales manager for a manufacturing company, covering most of the eastern US and Canada. My boss, Scott, decided to join me on the road one week in the Philadelphia area. Although the
With 2,500 people, and 7,800 installations in 2019, how does AVI-SPL work through standards, process and accountability? There is a lot of growth in the AV industry, and 2020 could be the first year an integration firm hits $1 billion. Some of this growth can be attributed to the rampant
How many days of selling do you think you have left this year? Think about it: you have three days this week, five days next week, and four days the week of the 16th. If you think you’re going to get anyone’s attention on Friday the 20th, or any day of the
