Regional partner Q&A: Hutchison IT connects a new generation on the Gold Coast

Welcome to the first part of a new ongoing series, the Regional Partner Q&A, where techpartner.news asks partners from the regions about what’s most important to them.

We’re starting with Queensland’s Gold Coast, an area just south of Brisbane with a population of 750,000 across 414,000km2, and an economy dominated by tourism.

Based in Robina, Hutchison IT Solutions is a managed services provider that delivers professional IT solutions to small and medium businesses across the region.

Owner and IT director Ben McHutchison has more than 15 years of experience in the IT industry and the company’s services include managed support, backup and recovery, website development and hosting, and communications.

McHutchison spoke to techpartner.news about his successes and challenges.

What is your biggest recent business success?

Deploying a wireless internet solution to a student accommodation tower, near one of the Gold Coast’s prominent universities. 

The solution required all new access hardware to the seven storey building with all 200+ rooms each fitted with new wireless hardware. 

Upgraded cabling throughout the levels and fibre internet connections provides the students a high-performance and locally supported internet service.

What is your biggest barrier to success or growth? 

Rising costs have expanded some of our service offerings. Historically, we would take a one-size fits all approach to managed IT services. We now take a more customised approach, which also means more value and inclusions for smaller clients.

How are you attracting and/or retaining talent? 

Through local universities. Work experience students undertaking Masters degrees in IT have gone on to take positions with us. This has led to further work experience students eager to engage with us on various projects.

Is there an emerging technology, product or service that is extremely interesting or relevant to your customers – can you give an example?

The Microsoft Power Platform is becoming increasingly requested across our customers. The platform for us extends across Power Automate, Power Apps and PowerBI. 

The use cases can vary from intake forms and approval workflows with automation to creating interactive dashboards and insightful reports—helping clients make smarter and faster business decisions using large datasets.

Are you partnering with other firms to fill gaps in your offerings – and with who? 

We partner primarily with developers for client website development and integration work. 

What do you want vendors or distributors to know about working with regional MSPs? Is there something they could do better? 

The frequent push from vendors and distributors to demonstrate software, attempting to replace existing backup software, patch management systems, RMM, SIEM packages, tends to get repetitive.