It's an axiom in the IT industry that to truly understand a customer you must first drink your own champagne — use technologies you recommend to others.
B2B veteran, Truis, took it a step further.
The 45-year-old IT services provider invested $250,000 from cash reserves to build a proof-of-concept store on its Seventeen Mile Rocks premises just south of Brisbane to experience technology used by its retailer customers.
Truis managing director, Norm Jefferies, said the reseller formerly called Computer Merchants until 2020, felt “threatened” by the changing nature of customer buying patterns and the role automation was having.
“Our real concern was our value and remaining valuable,” Jefferies told CRN at its 2024 Pipeline event on the Gold Coast.
“So we're running our business ‘bi-modal’ — We've got the existing model and serving our customers that way, which is based on customer service, responding to client needs.
“[But] we wanted to take part of the business and level it up in terms of [retail] industry specialisation.”
Kicking off 18 months ago, Jefferies wanted Truis to have deeper understanding of the lived experiences of its retailer customers.
“It has been a little bit of a leap of faith,” he said.
“We already had a strong retail business and understanding but we asked the sales team to really understand the retail market. They did a lot of education. They went to retail trade shows … and interviewed store staff at different retailers to understand what it was like to work there and challenges they faced.”
A Truis employee suggested the IT provider built its own retail store inside their offices as a proof of concept, he said.
“We've spent about a quarter of a million dollars, fitting that out with joinery [and] technology focused on solving business problems for retailers.
“Customers can do a proof-of-value with us, so they can use our technology — or we can get other technology if we haven't got it — to … demonstrate how it works. And then from there we can go and roll it out in their stores.”
Jefferies said it “changed the conversations” Truis could have with customers and opened up lines of communications deep and wide.
“We've been very much an IT-focused conversation with the IT department. Whereas now our conversations could be with the whole of C-suite, including the CEO.
“We may speak to the Chief People Officer … around staff safety because … one of the things we uncovered in staff interviews were retail employees are worried about their own safety.
Transforming the Truis practice from the outside-in
As Truis learns more about what modern retailers want from their IT partners, so its own business practice is evolving to serve new opportunities.
“We certainly have developed skills that help with retail,” Jefferies said. “So, we want our managed services team to be able to help a store with a fit-out.”
And it opened Truis to a raft of new vendors with which to partner.
“We're not the AI experts, so we went and found partners that have AI solutions for retailers.
“We've started to see a number of sales come through off the back of that. Besides the customers liking it, vendors like it, too. They are very happy to engage with us, particularly around retail, knowing we've got something to offer.”
As Truis proceeds to transform its customers, it’s taking a long look at its own legacies.
“But probably more importantly, we're focused on reducing [our] costs; and that's with automation.
“Our business has run its own ERP for over 40 years but as we integrate with PSAs [professional services automation] like ConnectWise and marketing tools like HubSpot we've more recently invested in … Boomi for … data integration.”
Jefferies said Boomi’s integration platform-as-a-service has slashed multiple handling of data.
“If we're buying something from a distributor, that information can flow all the way through … to a project. Let's say … they change the serial number [on a product], that would flow all the way back to our financial system and our” customer-relationship management software.
“So it's only keyed once.
“We're at the beginning of that journey, but our heritage has been a single pane of glass. And as we've added on newer technology, we've really lost that. So we understand the benefits of bringing that back. And that will help us lower cost in the business.”
Lessons learned and future-focused: Cash is king and heed your customers before vendors
Jefferies said Truis has always saved for a rainy day, which permitted it latitude to try new initiatives.
“Always bank a little bit of money for tomorrow,” he advised.
“We always leave some of our profits in the business so, if there's a rainy day or a project we want to do like funding this store or the future, the cash is there.”
Another lesson was listening first to what customers want before engaging vendors.
“We listen to what the vendors have to say … but we also listen to what our customers are asking for. So, often we'll make decisions based on what they're telling us.
“Because they are the ones who have the money to spend and then we tie it back to the vendors.”
In many ways, Jefferies said Truis had come full circle in the past five years.
“We've gone through a number of changes ourselves; the big one was changing our name. So we were called Computer Merchants. We started off selling used equipment.
“So, we're kind of coming back to where we started.”
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