In 1997, after working together as consultants on a large-scale outsourcing contract, Joe Infante and two partners formed the end-to-end solutions provider, Dynamic Strategies. Collectively, their experience of watching an outsourcing project go wrong helped them learn how to offer services that could help companies do outsourcing right. The company has prospered by maintaining its original clients – some for as long as 17 years – while continuing to build its customer base.

Dynamic Strategies not only helps its clients implement new technology, but it also provides support for those technologies it helps put into place. While competing firms often go an easier route, applying the same services across a diverse client base, Joe Infante and his partners believe it's more appropriate to create a custom solution for each client. “We have to tailor our services,” said Infante. “And we will tailor our services to what the client needs.”

This custom approach helped the company develop Velocity Advantage, its flagship offering, which is an IT managed services product. After reviewing the information technology ecosystem and its relationship to business objectives, a customized client solution is proposed. “It's really customizing these support models to not only meet the customer's needs, but also their expectations too,” Infante told The Suit in an interview.

Previous experience as consultants helped shape Velocity Advantage. “This goes out to being in this industry and remembering everything that we faced in developing our company and helping our clients,” said Infante. “We are looking at why outsourcing doesn't work, or where the existing problems are.”

Three Client Factors

Three basic factors govern how Dynamic Strategies addresses client needs: trust, vision and outcome. Clients need to trust a service provider. Companies in regulated industries such as finance and pharmaceuticals have regulatory standards they must adhere to on a daily basis. However even industries, which aren't restricted by such regulatory guidelines have genuine concerns about keeping IT systems running, up-to-date and secure. Trust is essential for the client to have confidence that a provider like Dynamic Strategies will be able to assess all their needs and address all concerns.

Vision is necessary. Clients often have an idea of what their needs are, but still require direction in how to get there. “They need help with what's out there, and with questions like ‘What have we got to be careful about?’ and ‘What am I not thinking about?’” Infante explained. “Trust and vision are two big things.”

The third factor, according to Infante, is outcome. “A lot of managed service providers seem to focus simply on the commodity,” he said. “Here's your service, here are the things it includes, and here's a service level. If I do all these things, then I provided a great service. And they probably have.”

A customized solution goes a step beyond by addressing the client's needs. “In the end the client is looking for an outcome that is more than just simply a commodity,” Infante asserted.

Keeping Current with Evolving Technology

Over the past 17 years, the team at Dynamic Strategies has learned to stay a step ahead of technology – and helps its clients do the same. Infante attributes the company's high client retention rate to these efforts. “I think this falls into why we can maintain the client base. It is our ability to change quickly and to adapt our services to meet the changing needs of technology,” Infante said. He refers to the conditions when the company was incorporated and PCs cost $4,000. “It's not like that anymore. Now we have co-location facilities, now we have cloud-based services. Now we have mobile apps and mobile devices. So we have evolved along with our clients' needs.”

Sometimes it requires holding a client's hand and walking them through the future, harkening back to Infante's three core principals of trust, vision and outcome.

“It's those three things we focus on which help us move, along with our client base – ahead of our client base,” he noted. “We're coming back to our clients, saying, ‘This is coming; cloud services are coming; here's what you're going to see in the next six months or year.’ That's the other thing we're doing for our clients. We're out in front and I think those are two big successes for us.”

Head in the Clouds

While cloud services have been around for the past few years, some companies are just starting to invest in them. As companies are starting to think more and more about the cloud, Dynamic Strategies sees opportunities helping to manage the transition in the “Wild West” that Infante calls the cloud platform, where established telecoms and start-up companies are competing for new contracts.

“There are so many different things coming from different types of providers,” said Infante. “Where does a client go? So I think we're going to see ourselves – not building a cloud solution – but being the broker and managing once again how our clients get to the cloud, when they use it, and how they integrate the cloud along with the things that don't fit in the cloud.”

One of Infante's big warnings regards things that don't fit into the cloud. “That's going to be one of the big issues. People think everything's going to go into the cloud tomorrow – they're going to pick everything up and put it in the cloud. That's not going to be the case. It's going to be more like, some things are going to be cloud-based and other things are going to be based on-premises. How do we integrate them? How do we manage? How do we keep control of these things?”

Although managed services for Dynamic Strategies will continue as they are currently being delivered, Infante sees a shift toward further addressing cloud solutions and problems as 2014 moves into 2015.

For more information, visit: www.ds-inc.com