Entag CCO: Building a customer’s trust is the “start line” for MSPs

Thea Mulheran explains why trust is an ongoing process.

As customers look for less complexity in their technology environments, they need to be able to trust their partners to ensure they can be ready for whatever the future brings.

At VerkadaOne in Sydney, Entag CCO Thea Mulheran explained that building trust for customers is the “start line”.

Speaking to CRN Australia, Mulheran she said customers want less complexity so they’re transforming from a reactive approach to a proactive approach.

"You can hear it in the customer's voice, they want to move forward, but there's that element of fear too,” she said.

“Because they ask, ‘can I trust this? Is it going to work? Is it right for my team? Can I trust you, and more importantly, their customers?’”

From a physical security perspective, Mulheran noted that installation used to be the finish line. But now, building trust is the start line.

“If you're a true MSP, you're working hand in glove as an extension of your customers' teams. Now, even if they choose us for a professional service work, guess what the value is in? It's in the adoption of that technology,” she explained.

“How you build trust is exactly by that. It's not that upfront, get it done, and you look at many moons ago, a perfect project on budget, on time, installation done; we're way beyond that.”

Mulheran said adoption is where the value is, not just the technology.

“The future is in that adoption, in that safe hands, in that trusted [partner], and it's in that delivery, and making sure it's very forward thinking and constantly evolving, as are we, so that’s important,” she explained.

Five pillar strategy

Based in the Sunshine Coast, Entag began as a small agile tech business and after several acquisitions, they are now Telstra’s biggest partner in Australia.

For Entag, their partnerships don’t define them, what defines them is our ability to take something complex and provide managed service wrap around five key pillars.

These pillars are unified comms, mobility workforce, network and connectivity, and cloud and security. The fifth pillar is the newest one being physical security.

Mulheran said the fifth pillar of physical security completes their strategy as an MSP.

“If you have all these traditional, call it telco pillars, but we're non-traditional in the way that we approach things, because we're not leading with tech, we're leading with problems,” she expllained.

“That's a key differentiator, that we’ve stood the test of time with that for our customers, so that last pillar completes all the others, because you can get it wrong in businesses, and absolutely longer years we have gotten it not perfect.”

According to Mulheran, Entag is at the stage where “everything has to complement each other”.

"Although a solution can be modular, you can come in and we can provide a key managed service on one pillar, they absolutely have to complement each other. We're very narrow and deep,” she said.

“I'm seeing customers shift from treating security and cyber as this isolated component to now, as we shift towards AI security, it's everything, and it's sitting over the top as a key strategy that is a real shared strategy for most of our customers, and us.”