Office Technology Dealer Revenue from Managed IT Up 28.8%

Forty-seven percent of respondents report that they engage in managed IT services. While this is slightly higher than the percentages reported in our 2021 and 2022 surveys, it is flat compared to last year, when 47% of office technology dealers indicated they offered managed IT services. Moreover, managed IT services represented only 7.6% of overall dealer revenue in 2024. These findings underscore that dealers aren’t capitalizing on a product offering that can fuel sustainability and profitability for their businesses.

As more dealers have gotten involved in managed IT, the complexities of it have proved daunting for some. However, as we’ve reported, many dealers share the view that the difficulties of launching managed IT services outweigh the resulting gains, even if profits aren’t immediate.

Oct Q15ManagesIT

Our October CR Connect Dealer Tour spotlights Ford Office Technologies and its focus on building its managed IT services to fuel growth. Says President Johnathan Garlow, “Our immediate big picture goal is to serve 10,000 clients by 2030 . . . .This revenue train stop toward our 10,000 goal is a pivotal one for us, and we are confident that it will happen within 2027. The reasoning is that, around this revenue, we are projecting our IT services revenue to outpace our traditional imaging revenue.”

Says CJ Cannata, “In an increasingly IT-centric world where AI is at the forefront of virtually all business strategy and efficiency discussions, an increasing amount of existing dealer customers and especially net-new targets will become more wary of partnering with office technology providers who do not have a solid foundation in IT, regardless of the core technologies they may specialize in,” CJ says.

“We will likely get to a point that even if IT is a loss leader, it will be more beneficial to a dealership’s total revenue and profitability to develop, maintain, and improve upon that area of expertise. I know this is not likely a popular perspective among many dealers in our audience – or even one that other analysts may necessarily share, but just think about it. It’s certainly a logical conclusion to draw when paying close attention to how the world continues to exponentially evolve technologically. And IT is at the center of all of that.”

However, we want to underscore our understanding of how challenging this can be for dealers. Thus, vendors across various industry segments with relevant knowledge need to prioritize, or continue to prioritize, supporting them in this evolution.”

In a close-knit business community like the office technology industry, where media companies are also providing consultative and other services to a vast majority of the most dominant companies in the industry, it’s challenging to always be completely transparent in your coverage. However, we know dealers want and need that transparency, so whether you are inclined to agree with these perspectives or not, this is about as direct and honest as we can be as we know other highly experienced and knowledgeable thought-leaders may not agree, in addition to a a substantial portion of the dealer community we’ve serviced since 1982.

Of the 47% of dealers who reported they are engaged as a managed service provider, nearly three-quarters (73%) reported a 28.8% average revenue increase for managed IT services.

Office Technology Oct Q16aManagedADD

Of the dealers who are engaged in Managed IT:

65% built their managed IT offering themselves.
27% chose a partnering strategy for IT.
20% made acquisitions.

*Note that answer choices in the survey were not mutually exclusive. Those 65% who responded that they “built their own” may also have partnered; some dealerships did all three: built, partnered, and acquired.

Partner preferences were ConnectWise followed by Collaborance (20 Group) and All Covered:

Oct Q15bPreferedPartManagedIT