When Rupert Leaton of Isle of Man-Manx Business Solutions (MBS) titled his May technology seminar simply “Cost,” 55 of his fellow Manx (the term for residents of the Isle of Man) showed up to hear more. This number is significant because the Isle of Man, situated between England and Ireland in the Irish Sea, is a relatively small island—the kind of place where when you rent a car, they don’t keep track of your fuel because you won’t drive enough to need a fill-up—but is also home to one of the world’s most sophisticated financial services industries.

So when 55 people—almost .01% of the Isle’s entire population—showed up for the “Cost” seminar, it said as much about the value-savvy nature of the Manx as it did Leaton’s ability to appeal to their business savvy.

“In the past, we’ve always had a specific topic, like ‘Document Management’ or ‘Business Process Automation,” Leaton explains. “‘Cost’ was simply themed around how all the technology solutions we offer can save costs. Whereas last year we might have been talking about compliance and disaster recovery, now the biggest driver is efficiencies.”

Leaton credits the success of “Cost” with being able to talk to financial services companies in their own language. “We’ve developed a very good understanding over the years of how these organizations operate, where their pain is and where most of their inefficiencies are,” he says. “The key is to have a clear understanding of your client’s business processes and apply technology solutions with ‘real world experience’ to meet their individual requirements.”

Key to that “real world experience,” he’s found, has been real world technical support. MBS has made investing in its support relationships key to ongoing success—both its own and its clients. Leaton and Julie Hammonds founded MBS in January of 2008, combining their 41 years of industry experience to strike out on their own after careers with another reseller. “We believed we could offer a better service to our customers,” Leaton says simply.

Their strategy’s working: MBS has already surpassed last year’s Laserfiche sales figures in just the first half of 2009, already qualifying for the Winners Circle. They expect to double that by the end of the year.

But Leaton admits it hasn’t been easy. “We had no idea what was about to happen with the global economy!” he says of striking out on the eve of 2008’s financial meltdown. But Leaton and Hammonds did know about the very real value of superior technical support to a financial services industry that was already facing enough challenges without having to add technical hurdles to the list.

“Given that most of our customers are global financial institutions, we have to have experienced technicians to not just provide support, but also the expertise to integrate with other applications,” Leaton says. “Laserfiche also gives us the ability to easily integrate with other applications, which adds more value to the overall solution.”

Leaton sees Laserfiche Avante as especially aligned with MBS’ strategy of reaching any-sized financial services companies with technology-driven cost efficiency. “A lot of our prospects are smaller businesses, and with Avante we are now able to offer workflow to them, where previously it would not have been cost effective,” he says. “Avante dramatically increases our offering, giving us a very comprehensive product suite to cover most eventualities.”

Between its investment in superior support services and its timely message of technology-driven cost efficiency, Manx Business Solutions has managed to succeed at a time when others might only survive.

“We have seen that with financial organizations, if they’re making money, then they are obviously happy and not too bothered about changing their infrastructure,” Leaton offers. “Now times are tougher, so they are far more open to listen to how technology can help them work smarter. So we see the current climate as a big opportunity!”

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Laserfiche
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Hobey Echlin is a Writer/Researcher in the Laserfiche Marketing department and is active in the Laserfiche Luminaries program.

Tags: UK

Posted on Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 8:47 am under VAR of the Month. You can comment on this post.