Doug Albregts, CEO, Marco
Doug Albregts, CEO of Marco, spoke with Invest: about the ways in which Marco has continued to evolve in a rapidly changing post-covid landscape and how these evolutions have spurred on growth in the tech industry.
What achievements has Marco experienced over the last year?
We’re continuing to grow as a company, and that’s been difficult coming out of Covid, as the workplace has changed drastically. We continue to grow within both IT and print, which I think is one of the biggest feats. We’ve started to customize offerings to match the new hybrid work environment for small to medium size businesses. It’s been slow for people to come back to the office, which is changing the way employees work and is resulting in evolution on the IT side.
We’re changing our company to try to match those evolving work needs. The traditional ways of the old world have moved to a new digital-first era. We’re doing that with fully integrated digital ecosystems and solutions, along with the hardware to advance IT. This is all offered as a service, which is important in this new world. We’ve started to offer AI-driven services to automate service delivery in the markets we’re in. These changes are imperative because of the ubiquity of people working anywhere at any time with any device. We’re also starting to implement an AI-augmented sales organization that prioritizes selling based on real time and predictive maintenance which is also key as the environment changes.
Our sales organization has transitioned to more consultative selling with industry specialists and trusted advisors, along with case studies. We’ve automated the customer journeys in our go-to-market strategies.
Are you seeing any difference between different cities and states’ return to office, and how do you see the future of office work?
In the rural areas, workers never truly went home. In the big cities and higher metropolitan areas we still are seeing a more hybrid workforce, and that’s challenging for us. If you look at IT spending in 2024, the largest anticipated growth in the U.S. IT market is Cloud Voice, which tells you people aren’t in the office, which is going to grow again this year by about 16.5%. Managed IT is growing because people have hybrid offices. In rural areas we’re seeing more people in the office and less home office use. When you start getting more into more metropolitan areas, you’re seeing more people working from home. It really depends on geography, but we are definitively observing that trend.
What are some of the key growth drivers for Marco in the current market landscape?
The biggest issue plaguing everyone with this work environment is cyber, and it’s probably the fastest growing segment of IT. The level of services needed depends on the type of company it is. Many small businesses don’t know much about cybersecurity, but they know it can bring their company down. One of our key offerings we started this year is called a VCiso Service, so a Virtual CISO, and we essentially become the outsourced CISO of a company. The reason for that is because companies don’t know where to start but want to make sure they’re completely covered. We’ve started to offer managed detection and response services with comprehensive threat detection, which involves the ability to detect, analyze and respond to a wide range of cyber threats. It just takes one employee to click on something they shouldn’t open. It can change the company’s entire trajectory. We want to give our customers and clients robust cybersecurity and training and awareness programs for their employees to minimize human error.
There’s a whole regulatory component affecting companies from schools to healthcare who deal with regulatory compliance needs. They’ve got to have the ability to integrate cybersecurity solutions within their current systems. We will help them connect that way via APIs and help provide API connectors as needed. Cyber is by far the biggest growth area and market. It’s the most complex, and it’s on everyone’s docket.
What partnerships do you have in place to continue leading in technology and maintain your competitive edge?
We work closely with ConnectWise, CrowdStrike, Perch and Barracuda to deliver cybersecurity services, depending on each customer’s needs. We can see into a customer’s vulnerability management needs and can offer the partners we think will work best with them.
We also attempt to understand a customer’s cyber insurance requirements, so we can help with the providers. Cyber insurance providers are increasingly requiring a lot of companies to have proactive cybersecurity measures including training and remediation, so many times we’ll handle remediation and use partners to do the other advanced detection services. Right now we’re not 24/7 with our security operations, but we can offer that capability through partners.
What steps are you taking to continue fostering a strong workplace culture?
We have to practice what we preach. We are somewhat hybrid based on the nature of our work, so we’ve got to be able to offer a culture that matches the cultures of our partners and customers. We have a gold standard culture based on four pillars, including employees, customers, the communities we serve and the partners we do business with. We invest heavily in our people and have a health and wellness program called Gold Standard Wellness with a dedicated website. Marco takes its employees seriously, and we know if we have great employees, we’ll have great customers. We support the communities where our customers live and work and invest back into organizations like the United Way.
How are you scaling your community support and trying to address regional issues?
It’s a grassroots effort. We offer robust internal internships to bring in kids from local communities to provide experience in technology. We’re not just looking at IT engineers but for anyone who expresses interest in technology to ensure we have a diverse group of people. We spend a summer with them to provide a look into business, our work culture, and to help them decide if they want to work at Marco or with other partnering companies.
We also look at challenging aspects plaguing our communities like food insecurity, and we have an annualized budget to help give back to these communities. Our company has recently expanded into 18 states, including a new acquisition in Kentucky and Indiana, and we intend to invest heavily there.
Could you share your vision for Marco over the next few years?
We are currently one of the largest integrated IT solutions companies in the country. We do business in over 35 states, even if we don’t have physical locations there. Everything is changing with the new hybrid work environment. We see the ability with AI around services, which is one of our biggest differentiators. We’re the feet on the street. Our goal is to expand nationally. Our revenue is close to half a billion dollars, and we expect to reach $1 billion within the next three years through organic growth and acquisitions. We want to continue building out cyber bundles for all different types of clients. Everything is a service, including hardware. People want to show up to work and have the same security protocols and cloud access both at the physical office and at home, and that’s what Marco is here to do.
