Types of IT Service Providers
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
For example, you can't expect a reseller/var to give you information that's in your own best interest.
And because they are up front about being a reseller so they know, that you know, that they are trying to make a sale. There is nothing shady. It's totally up front and honest. But if you ignore this fact, they are left in a weird situation of not understanding you and not doing what you might think that they are doing (sales.)
But I do think the waters are muddy at the least, and dishonest at the worst. For example, CDW and Zones. Both of these companies claim to have for hire consultancy services. I've never used them so I don't know how unbiased they are, but the fact that they are directly associated with a reseller/var, where most of their income comes from, it's hard to trust that they would be your advocate.
But they never claim not to resell things. I think that keeps them essentially all honest. Anyone getting other services from them knows that they make big money on the sales and that all advice is tainted. It's definitely all up front to me as a non-customer of either. They've never hidden the fact that they do sales primarily and that that is where the money is.
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@Dashrender said:
I've never used them so I don't know how unbiased they are, but the fact that they are directly associated with a reseller/var, where most of their income comes from, it's hard to trust that they would be your advocate.
I hear that they are incredibly biased, that all the design is just a sales pitch for high margin items. Nothing you would not be expecting from how they've presented themselves (sales people with just enough tech to allow sales to go through.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
I've never used them so I don't know how unbiased they are, but the fact that they are directly associated with a reseller/var, where most of their income comes from, it's hard to trust that they would be your advocate.
I hear that they are incredibly biased, that all the design is just a sales pitch for high margin items. Nothing you would not be expecting from how they've presented themselves (sales people with just enough tech to allow sales to go through.)
Having seen the non paid side of their consulting, I know this part to be true.. I don't know about their paid consulting side.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Because you have to understand what motivates them or else you will leverage things backwards or against your own benefits. Like getting people motivated to make sales to give you advice about what to buy.
Yeah, but I think that's just basically a case of being aware that "there is no such thing as a free lunch". Everyone is trying to sell me something. I don't see the need to understand different terms or how different service providers are setup to know that.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Yeah, but I think that's just basically a case of being aware that "there is no such thing as a free lunch". Everyone is trying to sell me something. I don't see the need to understand different terms or how different service providers are setup to know that.
But you need to know WHAT they are trying to sell you and how their advice is skewed.
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@Dashrender said:
Having seen the non paid side of their consulting, I know this part to be true.. I don't know about their paid consulting side.
It's probaby less biased, but the incentives are still huge for them to keep the bias.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Because you have to understand what motivates them or else you will leverage things backwards or against your own benefits. Like getting people motivated to make sales to give you advice about what to buy.
Yeah, but I think that's just basically a case of being aware that "there is no such thing as a free lunch". Everyone is trying to sell me something. I don't see the need to understand different terms or how different service providers are setup to know that.
Think of it as fixing colour balance on a photo. The first step is determining in what direction the colour is off. You can correct a lot of bias issues when you know what the bias is. Or know when the advice is so biased as to be worthless or actively negative.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But you need to know WHAT they are trying to sell you and how their advice is skewed.
Isn't that going to be obvious when they're talking to me? They can't sell me anything without telling me what they're selling.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But you need to know WHAT they are trying to sell you and how their advice is skewed.
Isn't that going to be obvious when they're talking to me? They can't sell me anything without telling me what they're selling.
No, it's not obvious - but that's a failing of IT more than of the vendor selling something. You're company has a problem it needs to solve, they should not be asking a reseller/var for a solution, they should either have internal IT do the research or hire a consulting firm to do that research to find the best solution.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
@scottalanmiller said:
But you need to know WHAT they are trying to sell you and how their advice is skewed.
Isn't that going to be obvious when they're talking to me? They can't sell me anything without telling me what they're selling.
Nope, you can't tell how they are skewing the advice. How could you? You don't know where they are making their money, what part is a best practice, etc. All you know is the result.
If you believe that ALL of what they are giving you is a sales pitch, why would you listen to it at all (which is often the advice.) If you believe that they have zero value or only negative value, then you know to avoid them. If you want advice and believe everyone has a bias, then you need to learn to look for and identify bias, combine it with the knowledge and resources you have to attempt to filter advice to know which parts are genuine, which parts are bias, etc.
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@Carnival-Boy People get sold things that they've never even saw / read / heard about all of the time.
Just because you bought X, doesn't mean it doesn't include Y and Z as well, especially as line items.
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I'm not claiming buying is easy, I've been doing it for years and I wouldn't consider myself a decent purchaser but I am a professional buyer, I'm not an idiot. I'm just wondering about the necessity of understanding the technical details of the provider's business model in order to identify potential bias. I'm just wondering how this wouldn't come out in conversation with a company - how it is possible to be duped because of failure to understand terms.
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The terms, often overlap, as you could easily hire an MSP to consult on a new project.
But that same MSP will recommend a solution (software or hardware) that also aligns with their sales departments goal. Because that's the hardware they're licensed to sale. Or simply want to sell because of Markup Value on said item(s).
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm just wondering about the necessity of understanding the technical details of the provider's business model in order to identify potential bias.
Let me just give a contrived, sample example:
Company 1 tells you that you need a SAN. You know that they are SAN salesmen and make a fortune selling SANs. By knowing this you know that this advice is literally worthless and must be thrown out. You are left with no advice.
Company 2 makes no money selling SANs but does make lots of money building storage systems. They recommend a SAN against their own financial interests. You have a good idea that they are being not only honest in recommending something that doesn't make them money but doing so against their own interests. Their advice about the SAN is likely from a sincere position of honest belief. You should at least consider this advice.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
I'm just wondering how this wouldn't come out in conversation with a company - how it is possible to be duped because of failure to understand terms.
Just because it comes out doesn't mean that someone has thought through or understands the bias or has empathy. Everyone knows that a reseller sells things, yet many don't take time to be conscious of their bias or have empathy with their position. That you can determine things and don't need terms isn't what matters, it's understanding their position and empathizing is what is important.
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@DustinB3403 said:
The terms, often overlap, as you could easily hire an MSP to consult on a new project.
But that same MSP will recommend a solution (software or hardware) that also aligns with their sales departments goal. Because that's the hardware they're licensed to sale. Or simply want to sell because of Markup Value on said item(s).
It shouldn't matter. If you're paying for advice then that consultant should be unbiased. It wouldn't be moral otherwise. I know it happens.
But if I have an eye-test at an opticians it shouldn't matter if that optician is also a glasses reseller - the test I am paying for should be unbiased. Now if I went in to buy a pair of glasses then I wouldn't expect rhem to advise me to buy from their competitors. They're going to try and sell me a pair of glasses
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@Carnival-Boy said:
It shouldn't matter. If you're paying for advice then that consultant should be unbiased. It wouldn't be moral otherwise. I know it happens.
I'm not even sure "shouldn't" is correct. If you are getting advice from someone that does advice and sells things, you are offering them money for advice AND offering them more to make it biased. Which inventive do you want them to chose?
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@Carnival-Boy said:
But if I have an eye-test at an opticians it shouldn't matter if that optician is also a glasses reseller - the test I am paying for should be unbiased. Now if I went in to buy a pair of glasses then I wouldn't expect rhem to advise me to buy from their competitors. They're going to try and sell me a pair of glasses
It's a very different situation. Other than you trust the optician not to sell you glasses even if you don't need any - but you likely would not have asked him if that were the case, right?
A few factors:
- You know if you need glasses or not.
- The advice is effectively "post sale." He's not advising you on getting glasses, only measuring to make sure the one you got fit. The sale is already made. We can mostly trust a server sales person to ensure we buy enough storage. But not to tell us if we need a server at all
- Glasses are not something you need advice amount, only a technical measurement. There really is no advice.
- Often glass sales are separate businesses run by different people (but not always.)
- Profits from exams far exceed profits from glass sales.
These are big factors that all come together. But the biggest is that there is no advice for the optician to skew to make money, none.
So actually this is a great example of why it is critical to understand bias and incentive. That it wasn't readily apparent that there is both a different set of incentives and a lack of advice vs. measurement in which to take advantage of someone highlights why it is so easy to misunderstand incentive and bias in an ITSP. If an optician's bias is tricky to detect, a company with many moving parts is far more difficult.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's a very different situation. Other than you trust the optician not to sell you glasses even if you don't need any - but you likely would not have asked him if that were the case, right?
No, I have glasses already, so I need to know if I need to have them replaced or not.
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@scottalanmiller said:
That you can determine things and don't need terms isn't what matters, it's understanding their position and empathizing is what is important.
I think that was basically my point. My key advice would be to trust no-one and recognise there is no such thing as a free lunch. I am surprised by the naivety of some of my colleagues, and how much they trust the advise of salesmen.
That's perhaps because I spent my formative years working Hong Kong, and business was generally a lot more cut throat over there. Business meetings were a lot more direct as well, whereas in Britain we're terribly coy about discussing money which makes it harder to get to the bottom of what someone is trying to sell you. I'm considered a bit rude in meetings over here, whereas in Hong Kong I was considered a bit too coy. I'm guessing the US sits somewhere in the middle, but I don't know.
