Monday Morning Impact – April 13

Gartner Offers Business Model Advice re: Coronavirus

IT industry researcher, Gartner Inc., has issued a five-phase approach to strengthening the resilience of organizations during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Companies tend to have traditional strategies and plans that focus on the continuity of the resources and processes but omit the business model,” said Daniel Sun, research vice president at Gartner. “However, the business model itself can be a threat to continuity of operations in external events, such as the global outbreak of COVID-19.”

The company is therefore making five specific recommendations to CIOs that can be valuable to channel partners, as well:

Phase 1 — Define the business model: Facing the contingency of COVID-19 outbreaks, companies should first focus on their core customers that are essential to their continuity of operations, and then refer to a process of defining their current business models by asking questions focused on their customers, value propositions, capabilities and financial models.

Phase 2 — Identify uncertainties: Given the wide range of uncertainties and threats, this step can benefit from a group of participants with diverse backgrounds and interests, particularly where IT is normally involved. Companies should focus on the risks that the uncertainty poses to the components of the business model.

Phase 3 — Assess the impact: Multidisciplinary members should form a project team to assess, or even quantify, the impact of the identified uncertainties.

Phase 4 — Design changes: Develop tentative strategies. CIOs and IT should leverage digital technologies and capabilities to facilitate the designed changes.

Phase 5 — Execute changes: The strategies for changes defined in Phase 4 provide essential input for this decision process. Senior leadership teams should select the strategies they feel most compelling to implement, which is often based on both economic calculations and intuition.

Once senior leadership teams select the business and IT change initiatives, CIOs should apply an agile approach in executing the initiatives. Gartner recommends that they can form an agile (product) team of multidisciplinary team members, enabling the alignment between business and IT and ensuring delivery speed and quality.

Gartner clients can learn more in the report “React to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak via Raising Business Model Resilience.”

Channel Impact^®
Although CIOs and channel partners do not normally lead the process of defining business models, they should proactively engage with senior business leaders to ascertain the necessary adjustments during the pandemic.

Ingram Micro Helps Partners Address Expected Cash Crunch Amid COVID-19

Ingram Micro has released two new partner financing programs extending $110 million in additional credit to approximately 2,000 channel partners across North America, temporarily waiving fees, and offering exclusive terms to members of its SMB Alliance and Trust X Alliance communities.

Available immediately in the U.S. and Canada, Ingram Micro’s new KickStart Financing and Future Funds programs allow channel partners additional cash flow options to finance the technology, services and support needed in real-time, allowing for more complete solutions to be sold together. In addition, the distributor’s new Future Funds program is offered with interest only payments for six months and starting payments as low as 1.5% of the total purchase price. At month seven the customer is presented a choice to pay off the balance or finance for an additional 12 to 60 months.

Additional Ingram Micro financing solutions available to channel partners across the U.S. and Canada include Direct Express, Technology as a Service, End-user Financing, Manufacturer Financing, Lockbox Solutions. All financing programs allow for complete solutions to be financed together versus one-off point sales that require separate financing agreements.

Channel Impact^®
The announcement demonstrates intent to work more closely with partners in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, providing necessary flexibility during highly uncertain times.

Cysurance and Kaseya to Deliver Compliance and Cyber Risk Management to Small Businesses

Cysurance, LLC, a New York-based cyber insurance agency, and Kaseya, a provider of IT infrastructure management solutions, have announced a partnership to help customers manage regulatory and online risks.

By bundling Kaseya’s Compliance Manager, a compliance process automation platform, with Cysurance’s cyber policy underwritten by Chubb, MSPs can offer customers a combined solution designed to reduce the risk of fines for non-compliance while also providing remediation and reimbursement after a cyber incident.

Kaseya Compliance Manager is a role-based platform that uses a wizard-driven workflow engine, automated network and computer data discovery, a web-based management portal and built-in compliance document generation and archiving.  It offers several modules for varying standards, including a cyber insurance module that increases the likelihood of claim payment by satisfying policy conditions.

Cysurance, a licensed agent, will enable MSPs and other partners to bind a broad policy of up to $2 million on behalf of their customer at the point of sale. Using the data discovery capabilities of products like Kaseya Compliance Manager, the platform scans the insured’s network and automatically records any anomalous activity in its proprietary blockchain, providing irrevocable proof of loss and full transparency. This also triggers a smart contract that initiates a covered breach response team to begin remediation, saving time and money.

“Kaseya Compliance Manger delivers Compliance-as-a-Service. Cysurance delivers Cyber-Insurance-as-a-Service,” said Max Pruger, general manager of compliance at Kaseya. “This partnership is a natural fit and gives MSPs a value-added offering that provides their customers not only with the tools to satisfy insurance policy conditions but also cost-effective, robust coverage to help them recover in the event of a breach,”

“By joining forces with Compliance Manager, we’ve created a product that gives MSPs the ability to be their clients’ one-stop shop for the cyber risk management trifecta of effective cybersecurity, cyber governance, and cyber insurance,” said Kirsten Bay, co-founder and CEO of Cysurance.

Channel Impact^®
According to the companies, 80 percent of small and medium businesses worry they will be the victim of a cyberattack, and 93 percent are willing to change MSPs if offered enhanced cyber services. The two companies appear to have synergy in this initiative.