SWC's Ric Opal On Bringing Digital Transformation To The Midmarket

When it comes to the types of services they want in the midmarket, are you saying there's a demand for that?

It depends. If you're talking to – let's call it legacy information technology - people who have grown up keeping lights on, they're not going to understand the need to do this, nor maybe [have] an appetite to go down this path because I'm sure that they're going to have a feeling potentially that they could be displaced.

Let's say they got the idea. I'm the IT guy; you're the CEO. I have an idea that might be transformational: I can enhance our customer experience. You probably won't even talk to me because you perceive me as being the "keeping the lights on" guy.  The other side of that coin is, if you can get to the business, and have an idea that's got some wood behind it - meaning something I can measure - you’ve got to have a number, and [it] has to be relevant to a business need.

I think the midmarket can, frankly, be very disruptive. Yet at the same time, they've got these ideas on how to be disruptive and they've got no idea what the proper mechanism is to take that idea and prove it out and … bring [the ones that are relevant] to reality.