Mike Fernando (TechBrain)
Two vendor partnerships significant to TechBrain are Watchguard and Connectwise, which the MSP aligned with in the past couple of years.
“Watchguard has been a partner that has been extremely supportive in their relationship with TechBrain. They visit us regularly and engage with us with regards to any new technologies or opportunities that may arise,” Fernando said.
“We are also a Connectwise partner. Connectwise is growing its presence in Australia and the improvement in the support since their acquisition has been notable.”
Throughout the years, TechBrain has also partnered with Cisco Meraki, HPE, Veeam, StorageCraft, VMware, Microsoft, Netgear, 3CX and Vocus.
Throughout the 18 years of its operation, TechBrain has faced a few bumps along the way. For Fernando, the most significant challenge faced over the last few years of operation was when the company decided to change its payment model, bringing in new technology, customers and employees.
“We transitioned from time and materials billing to fixed fee managed services at the same time as moving to Connectwise and Xero and onboarding a raft of new customers whilst also hiring and training new team members,” Fernando said.
During this time, the MSP was more than doubling its staff count from 10 to 25 employees and was referred to internally as “no man’s land”; the business took on more tasks but additional investment went into scaling the business with the rewards coming in the long-term.
Out of this juggling act, the Connectwise implementation was seen as the most challenging, as time was needed to make a meaningful change to the MSP and, in turn, for the MSP to understand the full benefits of the technology.
The way through this period, according to Crage, was to focus on customer service and continuous improvement – what he calls the “TechBrain way”.
“The outcome was a strong team of experts who were passionate about where the business was going, what needed to be done to get there and the important role they each played in achieving that,” he said
Fernando added if he could turn back the clock and redo everything all over again, he would have brought on board more external resources to handle what he called “a significant change” in the business.
Into the New Year and beyond
The success of TechBrain, according to Crage, is due to “identifying superstars and then inspiring them to be the best version of themselves”.
“With a strong focus on culture and core values we want to be as proud of the people we develop as we are of the business we build. That provides the foundation from which we can fulfil our purpose, which is to deliver intelligent solutions and exceptional service that wows the customer,” he said.
TechBrain’s plan to expand its national footprint is expected to be realised this year, as Crage highlighted that the business had already opened talks with other businesses.
“TechBrain has already had a number of discussions with owners of east coast MSPs looking to sell or partner with TechBrain and we expect that establishing on the east coast in 2020 will take us a long way towards our vision to be the most trusted SME IT support business in Australia,” Crage said.
In addition, the MSP has also set up a franchising model, which according to Crage is ready for use.
“We have created a franchising model to help existing IT support businesses grow revenue, increase profitability and benefit from being part of a collaborative team,” he said.
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