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Measuring, Benchmarking Your Company’s Cloud Services Business Performance

How ready is your company to compete in the cloud services market relative to the overall industry? That's a tricky question since you'll need your own metrics and a boatload of third-party industry data upon which to base the comparison.

Still, there are some potential solutions. Among the latest: The 2112 Group Cloud Altimeter -- a new tool that leverages the efforts of The 2112 Group, Microsoft and Ingram Micro. The tool, which surfaced at CompTIA ChannelCon 2017, helps IT service providers to understand their cloud computing capabilities and performance relative to companies with the same profile in the same geographic region, the three companies say.

How It Works

Getting Started: To understand how your company compares in the areas of strategic planning, marketing and sales execution, first, you create your profile, including the state your company's primary address is in, and the gross revenue you generated last year. Next, you will be asked questions about the cloud products your company currently sells, the percentage of revenue that came from cloud-based products, and how many sales people are in your company.

Your customer base: The next section of the questionnaire deals with your customers. The site will ask how much interaction you have with your cloud customers, your contract length, and how many customers are adding cloud products each month. From there, you will be asked about your current profit margins and your future plans.

After you have finished the 15 questions, you will be required to enter your name and email address to deliver your report.

Getting Your Cloud Services Profile

The report is instantly displayed within the website and a link is emailed to you for subsequent viewing. Inside the report you will find data about how your company compares to similar companies in your region. Each section, such as Cloud Products Sold Per Customer Engagement, will let you know if you fall above, below or on par with the national average.

Within the breakout of each section, there is a graph that shows the national average, the regional average, and where you fall in that category. It will also detail the reasons that particular item is important to the overall health of your cloud strategy and what you can do to improve your ranking.

At the end of the report, there are several additional resources to help you increase your cloud based offerings and sales. These resources include webinars from Microsoft and Ingram Micro, and YouTube videos about Ingram Micro's cloud marketplace.

Through this report, a company can gain great insight into how their business matches up with others in the region, without having to get the data directly from the source. As you make adjustments in your business, you can come back to the website and run through the questions again to see if you are making improvements as you compare it to the last time you ran the report.