COLUMN: iCorps’ IT Leadership On Demand A ‘Life-Saver’ For SMB Customers Starving For IT Insight

The IT Leadership on Demand Service focuses on strategic planning with the aim of driving strategic competitive business advantages for customers.

Rachel Woodhouse, a principal and director of operations for Dyer Brown Architects, Boston, couldn’t be more thrilled that she bet big on iCorps Technologies’ “IT Leadership on Demand service.”

With iCorps’ no-nonsense managed services aimed at providing critical business consulting to customers, Dyer Brown made the move to the cloud—including Microsoft Teams—putting in place a safe and secure work-from-home infrastructure before the global pandemic hit this year. “Thank God we made the switch over at the end of last year to the cloud because we were able to work from home,” said Woodhouse, who oversees IT strategy for the national architectural firm, which focuses on corporate workplace strategies. “That was absolutely a life-saver.”

Just as Dyer Brown—which has played a leading role helping clients retool office buildings for the COVID-19 era—is an extension of the corporate real-estate teams for its clients, iCorps is an extension of the information technology business teams of the small- and midsize-business customers it serves with its IT Leadership On Demand Service. The IT Leadership on Demand Service focuses on strategic planning with the aim of driving strategic competitive business advantages for customers.

iCorps provided a “forward-thinking” view of where Dyer Brown needed to take its IT strategy to be successful, said Woodhouse. “They brought up things with their technical knowledge that we just didn’t know about,” she said. “We need more than a partner that is just managed IT. We needed an ongoing gut check of our IT strategy—someone thinking of our best interest with all of our technology decisions.”

Woodhouse credits iCorps’ Leadership On Demand senior technology and systems consultant Anderson Nichols with helping put in place a cloud infrastructure that allowed the firm to serve its clients via the cloud anytime, anywhere and anyplace. The praise for Nichols, who attends the company’s IT steering committee meetings, is no small matter given the demands and “high expectations” of the Dyer Brown team.

Nichols provided the “high-level, business-level” attention that Dyer Brown needed to propel it forward, said Woodhouse. “This is, in my opinion, our most pivotal operational relationship,” she said. “There is nothing else that even comes close. Getting that right and continuing to deepen that relationship is key.”

The IT Leadership on Demand managed services model is taking off, driving significant sales growth for iCorps, which has rolled it out nationally. “The world is starving for IT leadership,” said iCorps CEO Mike Hadley (pictured). “There is no doubt about it. This is all about helping businesses make wise technology investments and decisions.” iCorps is having a “profitable” year and is hiring additional talent including security engineers and senior technology consultants, said Hadley.

Even with the pandemic, customers have to invest in technology and digitally transform to succeed, said Hadley. “The only way customers can survive and exist is by moving to the cloud,” he said.

“And you have to do it soundly—making good decisions and investments. That’s what we do with IT Leadership On Demand,” Hadley said.

The expectations that Woodhouse has for iCorps is nothing short of what she demands of her own team serving clients. “We look for consultant partners who operate at the same level that we do for our clients, which is to stay a step ahead of what their needs are, anticipate their needs and give them the most relevant information about what is happening in the market when they need it,” she said.

Make no mistake about it. The iCorps managed services offering provided Dyer Brown with a competitive advantage. In fact, while competitors were scrambling to enable work-at-home scenarios, Dyer Brown was in customer-facing mode, helping its clients navigate the pandemic. “That gave us an edge,” said Woodhouse. “We were able to get a jump on how this might impact clients and real estate. If we had been distracted by technology issues, we absolutely would not have been able to do that.”

Are you providing managed services that give your customers a competitive advantage? Let me know at [email protected]