Radenta Technologies, one of the country's leading Microsoft solutions providers, recently joined Crayon Connect 2023, an annual event that gathers channel partners across the Philippines.  

Crayon Connect is a must-attend event that allows partners to discuss the latest customer insights, industry developments, emerging trends, and new vendor technologies.  

The event's main highlight is the presentation of a custom study done by Forrester, a leading global research company. The study titled "The Future of Operations: Maximize Value from the Cloud with a Strategic Mindset" showed the concerns and aspirations of Small and Medium-Sized Businesses regarding cloud adoption and how solutions providers can best address the situation. Respondents came from Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea.  

Key findings indicate that SMBs continue looking to adopt the cloud to drive growth, benefits, and customer value. Limited internal resources hinder companies from adopting cloud technology. The lack of budget and technical knowledge has increased engagement with third-party service providers. SMBs increasingly view service providers as partners who share the same values in achieving cloud goals, aiding in advanced cloud usage, and providing end-to-end support.  

The study further shows that business and IT objectives mirror each other. Improving the experience of customers is at 86 per cent, while improving IT capabilities to enhance customer experience is at 85 per cent. Growing revenue is at 83 per cent, while aligning IT performance to business metrics is at 80 per cent. Improving the skills and capabilities of employees is at 81 per cent, while improving IT reliability and resilience is at 78 per cent. 

Eighty-three per cent of respondents say their SMBs will either maintain or increase their cloud investments in the next two years with the following spread across operational domains: 66 per cent, security; 53 per cent, business continuity; 38 per cent, business applications; 34 per cent, infrastructure; and 23 per cent, workforce productivity.  

The benefits per operational domain showed 57 per cent reduced/avoided cyberattacks, 51 per cent improved ability to meet compliance regulations, 47 per cent lowered overall costs, 41 per cent lowered total cost of ownership, and 58 per cent improved collaboration with external parties.  

SMBs, however, remain behind larger enterprises regarding cloud adoption. Forrester's Cloud Maturity Assessment shows that SMBs score a cloud maturity of 3.61 out of 5, indicating the lack of plans to support people, process, and technology.  

Across operational domains, less than half of SMBs engage third-party service providers. This results in struggles in managing software licensing issues, security concerns, and performance concerns. Nonetheless, most respondents, or 88 per cent, indicated that they see an increase in third-party service providers spend.  

The number one reason respondents engage with third-party service providers is the lack of budget to do the work in-house at 60 per cent saying that skilled IT personnel are expensive to hire. Providers having a better knowledge of technology come second at 52 per cent. Third, 42 per cent want to take advantage of a provider's pre-built software and project accelerators. The same percentage comes in at fourth with the acknowledgement of not having the skills and methods in-house. Finally, 39 per cent admitted needing help keeping up with emerging technologies.  

SMBs now consider third-party service providers as value-aligned partners, not mere suppliers. In the next 24 months, enterprises will go into engagement for the following reasons: business applications to manage cloud operations services, 76 per cent; security for cloud strategy development, 66 per cent; workforce productivity for integration services, 65 per cent; business continuity for cloud strategy development, 64 per cent; and infrastructure for migration and replatform, 58 per cent.  

Michelle Lasam, Radenta Technologies Microsoft Line of Business Operations Manager, was one of the panelists, and this is what she said on how the company learns from wins and losses. 

"We walk the talk. We do not just sell the technologies; we use them internally. We use technology to track down opportunities, analyze market trends, identify where we need to improve, see where our strengths lie and pinpoint where we are at in terms of achieving our goals." 

As to why increasingly small and medium-sized businesses are seeking strategic engagement with their partners, Michelle breaks it down with her answer.  

"It is beneficial for an enterprise to partner with vendors like Radenta because we do the grunt work for them so they can focus more on running their business." We have the experience, infrastructure, and processes for a seamless and cost-efficient transition.  (Art Samaniego)