How FUTERA is helping IT MSPs grow faster and provide a better customer experience
Technology services provider FUTERA is poised for strong double-digit growth this year, and the IT MSP community is central to its plans.
One year after establishing its new identity and new ownership – it is now an employee-owned business – FUTERA is anticipating growth of around 30% this year, based on its Q1 performance.
Formed last year from the merger of IT and managed print services provider United Business Group (UBG) and Paralogic, a provider of channel-only support & logistics services (acquired by UBG in 2023), FUTERA provides a comprehensive range of technology services both to end user business customers and IT MSPs.
These include managed print services, in which it has almost 40 years of experience; managed IT services, which UBG started offering almost a decade ago and has been expanding ever since, organically and through acquisitions like that of cloud and IT support provider Turncloud in 2021; and essential support services such as field servicing break fix, logistics, installation, pre-delivery inspection and secure disposal.
Today, FUTERA has 16 service lines that CEO Lee Manning describes as the company’s ‘engine of growth’. The same could be said of the company’s channel sales.
IT outsourcing
FUTERA already provides IT outsourcing services to hundreds of channel businesses and, following a period focused on integrating its employee ownership model and strengthening its operational foundations, it is now actively targeting IT MSPs that may not have the scale or resources to deliver those services themselves.
For them, FUTERA offers a compelling proposition, particularly at a time when profit margins are under pressure, the cost of employing people has gone up and SME customers are consolidating their supplier relationships and expecting a trusted technology partner to deliver an expanded range of services.
Its services give IT MSPs the ability to add capability without having to invest in headcount and systems, often to meet short-term capacity constraints or the requirements of a specific project, such as last year’s Windows 11 upgrades or changes to ISO 27001 requirements. FUTERA has even been asked to quote for a roll-out of 2,500 connected coffee machines.
As Manning says: “It’s not specifically IT, but we’ve got the warehousing and logistics and smart people to do it.”
Project overflow
Channel Sales Director James Pittick adds that while the most in-demand service is technology break-fix, FUTERA is seeing growing interest in logistics, e.g. deliveries and installations, and project overflow, where a business may have the capacity to do something but not at scale.
“Say you’re doing network cabinet remediation for a customer across multiple sites. If you’re in Newcastle, you might be able to get to your customer’s sites in the north-east, but not to their site in Brighton or their site in Gloucester. You might need help with the regional overflow, which is what we can provide,” he explains.
“A term we use is ‘smart hands’, using one of our team to be your eyes and ears and hands on-site. You might be able to configure things remotely but need us to go and plug something in or relay what’s displayed on a screen. Having a competent person with good fundamental knowledge to help with that is an easy service for people to plug in.”
Manning adds that IT outsourcing gives customers the flexibility to accommodate changing requirements as they scale. “Growing MSPs might outsource for a bit, then get to the point where they’ve got 50 or 60 staff and decide to bring somebody in-house. Then they realise, as they scale to 150 staff, that one person’s not enough, so they’ll outsource again. Then, when they get up to 300 staff, they might go ‘right, we’ll have a full desk now’.”
Doing things the right way
While it is usual for OEM hardware manufacturers and software vendors to have both direct and indirect sales operations, such arrangements are arguably less common for service providers. So, are MSPs concerned about conflict of interest?
Not as much as they used to be, says Manning.
“We launched the FUTERA brand last February, and it’s taken some people a bit of time to come to terms with the fact that we operate direct and through the channel. A year ago, there were people who didn’t want to talk to us because they saw us as a competitor who are now perfectly comfortable placing contracts with us because they know we’ve got no interest at all in poaching their customers. We’ve got great people with great reputations, like James, who people know and trust, and that goes a long way,” he says.
Pittick points out that while channel conflict was always more of a concern on the print side than the IT side, 12 months ago it would still have been the number one objection voiced by IT MSPs – ‘You’ve got a direct side of your business; how can I trust you to manage this project for me?’. That, he suggests, is something he hears much less now.
“We’ve addressed it in a number of ways. Firstly, we operate with strict data segregation across the business, supported by defined internal governance processes and controls. Information is fully separated, so the channel side has no access to direct customer data and vice versa, with access managed, monitored and regularly reviewed. We’re more than willing to put contractual guarantees in place if required.
“Underpinning that is our reputation. The MSP community is closely connected, and trust matters. If we were to get this wrong even once, it would have a direct impact on our ability to grow. That’s why we take it seriously.”
Pittick goes even further, pointing out that far from opening up an IT MSP to unwanted competition, partnering with FUTERA could help protect its existing business.
“Take an MSP that is asked by a customer to support an obscure piece of technology that they don’t have the ability to manage. They won’t necessarily want to say no to the customer in case they go and find a competitor that can look after that technology and provide additional services. Instead, the MSP can subcontract that one element to us so that they can technologyreseller.co.uk provide the service to their customer without having to invest in the overhead, without having to invest in the technology or see it as a future service offering. That’s an add-on we can provide almost on a project basis.”
This approach dovetails with FUTERA’s mission statement to pursue the long-term success of relationships, which Manning says is based on ‘doing things the right way’.
“We’re here to support those people that want things to be done the right way and who appreciate that doing them the right way often incurs a little higher cost than doing them in the cheapest way possible just to tick a box. We’re not interested in making an extra £500 here and there. We want a long-term partnership. The market offers plenty of choice if you just want something cheap and an average experience. But if you want a really high-quality experience, there aren’t too many places to go. We’re trying to fill that gap.”
He adds: “We like to think we’re really good at the difficult. We have some customers that we can only get to by helicopter, another where a ferry goes to the island, but only twice a week: we go there and stay for a few days until the ferry comes back. At another site, the reception is eight miles from the main building. Then we have clients in healthcare manufacturing, where you have to put your clothes on in a certain way. It’s not just people turning up to do something. It’s sensible, diligent people, and you don’t get that from everybody.”
Acquisition programme
There is another reason why IT MSPs are of interest to FUTERA: it is still on the acquisition trail.
In pursuit of its goal ‘to be the UK’s first choice partner for technology services’, FUTERA has already made half a dozen acquisitions to gain new skills and capabilities, to extend its reach across mainland UK and to increase its customer base.
This programme is ongoing and FUTERA is interested in talking to any IT MSP that has a good quality business, great people, great customers and, crucially, the right cultural fit.
“We don’t particularly mind how profitable an MSP is. We know what we’re doing and can turn around a business that isn’t doing that well,” explains Manning. “But as an employee-owned company with a team of people that really cares about customer service, we are interested COVER STORY in the cultural fit. The tech stack they use and all of that can be remediated and changed. It isn’t a problem. What does matter is how much they care about what they do and how much they care about their customers.
“Invariably, IT MSPs really do care about their customers. IT MSPs are started by techies who want to do things better, not by salespeople who could earn more money elsewhere. It’s a completely different ethos. One of the big concerns of owners who have built a business up over 30 to 40 years is, ‘are you going to look after my customers and my staff when I retire?’. That’s almost their number one question. We’re poised for that. We want the staff, we want the scale, we want relationships and, yes, we do a great job. I’m quite proud that all our Google reviews are five-star, bar one and that was four-star.”
In this context, Manning adds that FUTERA offers an attractive alternative to the private equity money swilling around the marketplace.
“If you are looking to retire or exit your business in the next couple of years, and private equity isn’t the road you want to go down, we’re here. We’re nice people doing a great job. We’re not asset stripping, we’re buying the people, the relationships, the whole company. If you have a good quality business, with great people and great customers, we would love to talk.”
www.FUTERA.co.uk
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