Advantages of Working with a Community-Minded Business

When choosing a cloud service partner, it’s typical to look at how reliable their Backup as a Service (BaaS) and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) offerings are, whether their services comply with HIPAA, PCI, SOC 2 or NIST standards, or how easy it will be to integrate their services into your workflows. But, there’s another question you might want to answer before choosing a technology partner: Are they “community-minded”?

Community-Mindedness Defined

A community-minded business has a team dedicated to improving people’s lives in the communities they serve, whether they do business in a relatively small region or more widespread geography. But it doesn’t mean that prioritizing the welfare of a community means that a business overlooks its clients’ individual needs – quite the contrary. Whether ensuring that each client has the right technology stack and excellent customer service, investing time and resources into supporting charitable organizations, or pitching in to volunteer, a community-minded business is always focused on its “highest and best use” in society.

Benefits to Your Business

Maybe this has been a thought that sits in the back of your mind as you’re assessing vendors and partners but it’s time to bring it to the forefront. The quality of being “community-minded” is more than a “nice-to-have”, there are practical reasons that you’ll want to partner with these companies:

• Low Turnover

Community-minded businesses usually have strong team dynamics and positive work environments, which typically means high employee retention rates. In fact, a Glassdoor survey found that 56 percent of employees consider culture as more important than salary when it comes to satisfaction with their jobs. Employees at community-minded businesses work in a strong, positive culture, so you can count on the account manager you know to answer the phone – rather than encounter a revolving door of employees as they’re hired then replaced.

• Accessibility

A community-minded business won’t spend its time in an ivory tower. Instead, its team will support local events and may even patronize your business. You can count on more face time with these vendors and have first-hand knowledge that your service provider is a strong link in your business’s network. You’ll also see that your service provider cares about the same issues and causes that you do by their contributions and volunteerism.

• Invested in your Success

When a technology company recognizes the importance of building up the economy in the community it serves, it will also work hard to help you grow your business and operate profitably. Community-minded businesses aren’t in it only for themselves – they know your success is also a factor in their success.

• Fun

You want to remove as much friction from your employees’ day as possible – including dealing with unresponsive or irritable vendor reps. A community-minded service provider that has fostered a positive, fun culture makes interactions more pleasant and less disruptive to your operations. Furthermore, when your provider’s team enjoys their work, they’re going to do it better, and your business reaps the benefits.

The advantages that businesses have when working with a community-minded service provider are more than theoretical. There’s proof that it makes a difference. For example, our mission includes supporting the communities we serve, and our Net Promoter Score, which was solid 67 when we did our first survey, is trending upward. As of September 2021, our NPS was at 80. Our community-minded culture is a major reason our customers are increasingly willing to recommend us to their peers.

Give your Company the Advantage of Working with a Community-Minded Business

It’s relatively easy to vet a cloud service provider based on the solutions and services they provide – and that should be your primary objective when selecting a vendor. But, to ensure your relationship with the provider will be most beneficial, right behind that should be whether their team is community-minded. However, it may take a little more effort to understand a vendor’s culture than just reading the “about us” page on their website or downloading a brochure.

Ask people in your network or the provider’s references how committed the cloud service provider is to the community. You can also follow your technology partners on social media – for example, check out Virtual Systems on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/vsystemsUSA/, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/vsystems-com/, and Twitter@VSystemsUSA.

Adding or upgrading cloud services is an important step in your company’s digital transformation that will help you to operate more efficiently and competitively. Give your business every advantage.