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September 14, 2015 Issue

The Most Powerful Name In Corporate News and Information

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Value Added Reseller of Mobile, Wireless and Data Collection Technology in the US

 

 

Kevin Price

Founder & CEO

 

Accucode, Inc.

www.accucode.com

 

Interview conducted by:

Lynn Fosse, Senior Editor, CEOCFO Magazine, Published – September 14, 2015

 

CEOCFO: Mr. Price, Accucode has a twenty-year history. Would you tell us the focus today?

Mr. Price: Today, Accucode has evolved into a diversified technology products and services company. We have three different commercial SaaS products. We have a wholesale IT services business. We are one of the largest value-added resellers of mobile, wireless, and data collection technology in the US.

 

CEOCFO: How does that break down?

Mr. Price: There are certain areas of greater focus. There are significant products and secondary products. Right now, the biggest push and part of our focus and strategy moving forward is our wholesale services division, InDemand Technologies, which was spun off in July 2014. We took our field services, managed services, and HaaS business models and spun those off as a wholly-owned subsidiary that is focused on providing wholesale services to other VARs, software ISVs (Independent Software Vendors), wholesale distributors, and technology OEMs. We are partnered with ScanSource and BlueStar behind the HaaS model for the POS sector. We have most of the major hardware manufacturers and cloud based POS vendors partnered with InDemand around the HaaS business model and taking the CAPEX components of their current proposition and turning them into a monthly subscription.

 

CEOCFO: Why was this the time to make it a separate division?

Mr. Price: Our service capabilities and our ability to execute services on scale with consistent outcome and a consistent pricing model have always been part of Accucode’s core competencies and competitive edge in the marketplace. I took that business and spun it off as a separate entity because it is worth a lot more to the whole sector than it is just to Accucode. I have a lot more product and services capabilities than I have salespeople to take it to market. At the same time, from our perspective, a large percentage of the VAR market, particularly the smaller and mid-sized VARs, really lack the ability to deliver scaled consistent services and aren’t making that part of their revenue strategy. It has become more and more important for VARs to focus on building recurring revenue and establishing managed services relationships with their customers because that is what makes them sticky. It gives them a defendable position in the account and is a defense against eroding margins on the hardware side. I see partnering with distributors like ScanSource and BlueStar to bring those services to market at a wholesale level as a large market opportunity. It is a dramatically larger addressable market for our services opportunities. We have had so many exciting partnerships coming online with hardware manufacturers where the customer wants a unified approach to service execution. The old way of the self-serving OEM service that says, “you are going to do it my way” because that is the way the OEM wants to do it is over. The OEM does not want to do it that way anymore and wants a unified approach to services support and if you cannot give that, the OEM is buying from someone else. InDemand is all about facilitating that model and addressing the need in the marketplace.

 

CEOCFO: Why do companies want to partner with Accucode and what makes you a good partner?

Mr. Price: Our customers partner with Accucode because of our philosophy and approach to problem solving and our integrity. My position for twenty years has been that if I am the expert, then I should be willing to guarantee my work. If you take my advice and listen and allow me to solve the problem the way I suggest it ought to be done, I will guarantee the cost and the budget. I have said to every customer for twenty years that if a competitor is not willing to make those same kinds of guarantees, then I question his qualifications and his own confidence in his qualifications.

 

CEOCFO: Are people coming to you because they know that or are they surprised to find out your philosophy?

Mr. Price: In many cases, it is the latter. Frankly, even with end customers, one of our biggest struggles over the last twenty years has been that our approach and philosophy is so different in what you find in the broader IT marketplace. So different that it is sometimes hard to get customers to believe you. It is the same with channel partners; they do not believe you. We stand by our commitments and that is a differentiator. Our partners trust in that with us and it has transformed their businesses. They can pursue larger opportunities with long-term revenue and recurring revenue because they have a partner like us standing behind them.

 

CEOCFO: How do you find people to represent your company that have the skill and philosophy of serving the customer?

Mr. Price: Finding the right people, getting them properly engaged, and keeping them motivated can be a challenge at times. If it requires a manager to stand behind them every day to make sure they show up and do it well, then it is not sustainable. The only way to really do it is to get employees to want to do it and to do it well. These days, when we hire, we are interviewing for psychological and personal values, as well as for shared perspective and alignment to our company culture. We look for people that are life-long learners and people with a service-minded attitude that want to be part of something bigger. When we find those kinds of people, they have a tendency to stick. We have many employees who have been here for fifteen years and a lot who are a decade or more at a time when that is relatively unheard of in IT.

 

CEOCFO: Can you determine quickly who is a right fit for Accucode?

Mr. Price: No, you cannot tell. I am one of the biggest suckers out there, as many good salesmen are. Nobody sells me better than I do myself and if I like the person and feel an initial connection to them, I am quite likely to talk myself into the idea that they are a fit. You have to have processes and milestone reviews in place once they are onboard to really tell if they are a long-term fit.

 

CEOCFO: What services can you provide that your wholesalers or direct customers are not using enough?

Mr. Price: I would say skilled services, rollouts, and the physical deployment of technology out to a highly distributed enterprise. For example, in the fitness space, we are partners with gym equipment manufacturers and currently install wireless networks for 100 - 150 health clubs and gyms a month. We have almost no VARs or ISVs engaging us for those kinds of services. It is entirely non-IT partners that are selling products into customer locations where they need an IT component to go with their own proposition, like reliable wireless infrastructure to go with the next generation gym equipment that requires an internet connection. The manufacturers of that gym equipment are all selling wireless for us into that gym space and we help eliminate the barrier to adoption for their next generation technology. With HaaS, there is a lot more opportunity particularly with the hardware manufacturers themselves. Many of them have decided that they want to move into the recurring revenue model, but financially and operationally, it is such a paradigm shift because you are no longer selling part numbers to the customer and wishing them luck and hoping for a three-year upgrade cycle. You are owning the technology on behalf of the customer and helping him operate, manage, and service it every day. You bear the cost of ownership because the customer is paying for a guaranteed outcome and does not own the device, you do. They have it in their heads that they want to shift in that direction, but they are struggling to figure out how to do it. We have a program in place and are ready to finance, own, and execute the model on their behalf, and give them the ability to start adding service models to their go-to-market strategies.

 

CEOCFO: What surprised you that Accucode has grown and developed?

Mr. Price: When I started, I wrote my first version of the business plan intending to build it out and sell it off in five years. Here I am twenty years later and that is a bit of a surprise. The size and scope of things is also a surprise. In many cases, even though I have watched the technology vendors in my industry change and consolidate, I am still dealing with some of the same lack of integrity and poor management issues that I was twenty years ago. The names have changed and it is different people on the other side of the table, but the behavior and outcomes are still just as authentic and sustainable. That is surprising to me and I see it across the whole IT sector. It boils down to short-minded behavior being driven by somebody’s quarterly compensation plan.

 

CEOCFO: Why is Accucode an exceptional company?
Mr. Price:
It comes down to our company culture and perspective on problem solving. At the core, everything we do needs to be scalable and repeatable. If it is not, then all we have done is created one problem out of another problem. If it takes an army of people to solve the problem, then we did not solve the problem, we just traded one problem for another problem. Technology-enabled services execution is about us all having to deliver services in the future. It is not enough just to sell the technology to our customers. We have to use it to deliver our services and solve problems for our customers. The philosophy in that approach is really what has always made Accucode unique. We are not just chasing deals and looking to win the next low-margin hardware fulfillment order. We can do that and compete with anybody, but that is not why I am in business. I am looking for permanent problems that I can go build sustainable business models around to solve for an entire industry sector, not just one customer.



 

“It has become more and more important for VARs to focus on building recurring revenue and establishing managed services relationships with their customers because that is what makes them sticky. It gives them a defendable position in the account and is a defense against eroding margins on the hardware side.”

- Kevin Price


 

Accucode, Inc.

www.accucode.com

 

Kevin Price

303-999-9183

kprice@accucode.com




 

 



 

 


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