The Power of Brand: 5 Tips for Selecting Your Ideal IT Partner

There are more than 10,000 SaaS companies in the U.S. alone and at least 15,000 worldwide. So how do you filter down these solutions to find what’s best for you and your organization? We all have our methods, including IT partners and consultancies, but that final choice can still be very challenging.

One of the things I took away from spearheading Nasuni’s recent refresh, however, is that you can learn a lot about a company from their brand. My goal here is to help you make your next technology purchase easier by giving you 5 considerations when evaluating an IT partner, especially for an initiative as complex as data infrastructure.

Before we get into the 5-point evaluation, I want to explain why companies who pay attention to their brand have higher success rates. A brand is the reputation that a company has that distinguishes itself from others in its industry. ‘Brand’ is the psychology behind why people purchase a specific item or service from one company over another – even if two companies provide the same product with the same features. Even though Apple and Samsung both provide smart technology devices that access the internet, take photos, and call your family, you likely prefer one over the other due to your own personal goals and values and how effectively either brand aligns with those.

However, a business decision can have much more critical implications than which phone you decide to carry around in your pocket. So, let’s get to it:

1. Is the organization a leader in its space?

Everyone claims to be a leader and innovator, but the best way to evaluate a brand’s status within its market is through third party validations like industry awards, recognitions, testimonials, and certifications. Look at which awards or analyst firms they cite, then dig into those write-ups to see what the analysts have to say about the solution and its competitors.

A simple search for customer reviews is also a great way to validate the company-selected materials on the website. We encourage interested IT leaders to look at our stellar peer review ratings in both Gartner, a valued and trusted partner to many large enterprises, and G2, for example.

Additionally, it’s essential to see whether the brand has earned any customer-service-specific recognition. If you treat your customers well, they will speak highly of you in the market, and stick with you for years. Our world-class NPS score of 87 is proof our customers think highly of our product and our company.

2. Does the brand have strong industry partnerships?

The relationships the provider has with other industry leaders is critical. In the hybrid cloud services market, for example, you should look at the solution provider’s relationship with the major hyperscalers. Expect to see Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud featured prominently on the provider’s site, with detailed information about the depth, quality, and duration of the partnership. Does the hyperscaler feature the provider on its own pages? Does the hyperscale advocate for the provider’s solution? Has the provider received elevated status and certifications from the provider?

For instance, we are a Gold-Level Partner and winner of Microsoft’s Global ISV Partner of the Year. Our strong relationship and extensive track record with AWS has earned us 5+ certifications, 2 competency citations, 4 partner programs, and more. At Google, a Google Cloud Premier Partner and a Google Cloud Assured Workloads partner. I’m not pointing this out just to brag. All of these external proof points from major hyperscalers start to build a picture of a reputable and reliable brand.

3. Do your core values align?

This is admittedly a little more difficult to measure, but you can find the values of a company reflected in its content. Skim through the blog, press releases, and leadership pages to get a sense of what matters to the organization. Pay attention to what the founders and executive leaders are saying in their videos or writing in their posts both on the corporate site and on platforms like LinkedIn. If you do this with Nasuni, for example, you’re going to learn very quickly that we focus on two things: our people and our customers.

A great place to find more of this information is on a company’s About Us or Careers page. Doing a little bit of research into the type and quality of talent they attract can tell you a lot about the people behind the product, and in turn, the quality of the product itself. Nasuni upholds its values of quality, transparency, accountability, integrity, and teamwork in every aspect, so much so that it penetrates through our employee decorum and presents itself in our relationships with each other, our IT partners, and our customers. Knowing we have similar values to our customers means that our customers can expect a commitment to continuing to improve and expand our product to meet their needs and their ultimate goals.

4. Does the brand show up?

Business is built on relationships, and there is no more important relationship than that of an organization and its customers. This includes conversations and follow ups, but also in networking activities and social events. If a company is investing time and money into building those relationships, you should be able to find them both digitally and physically – at industry events, local meetups, and thought leadership conferences, just to name a few. Most of what ‘brand’ makes up is an abstract concept, but showing up physically and translating these concepts into relationship building can really set a brand apart from the rest – and it shows the value they place on their customer relationships.

5. What does your gut tell you?

Okay, so data-focused and analytical types may roll their eyes at this one, but it’s worth trusting your instincts when evaluating a brand. As you interact with the organization’s people, consume their content, and browse through their materials, you should get the impression that this organization is aligned with your goals and mission – because at the end of the day, they should be an essential partner in helping you reach those goals.

Ask yourself: How does the brand’s visual artwork make you feel? Does it seem new and modern? Does it seem ready for the moment or anchored in the past? Think of a first impression and all that goes into preparing for one. Do you get the sense from the way the brand looks and the information it shares that it is trustworthy? You might not pull precise answers out of this phase of your evaluation, but that gut instinct, for better or for worse, can be telling. If you’re looking for an enterprise IT solution, you’ll want the impression that the organization is not only modern and adaptive, but also reliable and trustworthy. These were a few of the principles that shaped Nasuni’s visual rebranding. We centralized around the visual elements of fluidity (liquid) and structure (hexagons) that communicate how our enterprise data platform is built to support the evolving demands of enterprise data.

This 5-point inspection of an enterprise brand may not seem essential when you’re pressed to solve a specific problem. You just want a reliable, cost-effective fix. But it’s important not to settle for a provider who is going to do little more than hand you a digital Band-aid. They’re going to want to be your IT partner for years to come. And for that partnership to work, you need to evaluate the brand for proven indicators of leadership, clear signs of momentum, validation of the organization’s standing in the marketplace, and a set of values that match your own.

Want to find out if Nasuni is the right IT partner for you and learn how to set your data free from outdated structure? Read about the Nasuni difference.