Listen to this articleShop4Clouds is an innovative platform that provides consumers in commercial, government and higher education a free and easy way to shop for IT services, quickly providing customer-specific comparison and recommendation analytics. They are driving a new paradigm shift by gamifying the IT consumer shopping experience. Shop4Clouds’ platform also helps distributors, resellers and OEMs reduce costs associated with acquiring new clients and streamlines the pre-sales process across their catalogs. Below is our interview with Keith Trippie, Co-Founder of Shop4Clouds:
Q: Keith, how would you describe Shop4Clouds?
A: Shop4Clouds is a patent-pending matching platform that simplifies the shopping experience for IT services. The platform gives the power back to the IT or Business employee navigating the vast array of IT services available in the market. Our DIY approach makes it easy to get to a decision. Step 1: Answer easy-to-answer questions about your business needs; 2) Receive comparisons and recommendations tailored to your unique needs..in seconds and 3) Earn points just for shopping; which users will be able to redeem later this year. We started the Shop4 brand with cloud services, but will expand to other IT categories in the future. Simplest way to think about our model is future releases around Shop4Cyber, Shop4Software or Shop4Telecoms as the way ahead.
Q: What was the inspiration behind building Shop4Clouds and who is your ideal customer?
A: In an earlier role, I ran a large, multi-million dollar IT organization at a 250K person organization. I jumped on the cloud train early on as I was a big believer in how the cloud business model could positively transform IT value to meet an organization’s mission objectives. While a big fan of the model, one problem I experienced, was the amount of time and money I had to spend to conduct analysis just to make the decision on what IT service met my client’s needs for a wide variety of IT needs (tech refresh, new starts, etc…) Too many choices, compliance requirements I had to keep up with and the frequency of new services and pricing available in the market can make even a seasoned IT executive’s head spin. My customers did not like the time it took to get to a decision, and I certainly didn’t like the amount of money I had to expend on my employees and contractors to do the research. I talked with peers in other industries and they lamented the same frustration. Like other entrepreneurs, I had the “aha” moment.
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Q: What advantage does Shop4Clouds have over its competitors?
A: There are only a couple companies that have started down this path. They are fine companies, but our model is different. We are going a little further in the shopping experience. First, our free service is focused on the user and their unique needs. We have tailored the easy to answer questions based on user persona; i.e. business people answer business focused questions and technical users have questions more tailored to their professional experience. Second, we have added gamification to reward the users throughout their shopping experience. We have automated the shopping experience, so from the comfort of their mobile phone, tablet or computer they can get comparisons and recommendations in minutes. We feel confident we have the first to market advantage with our unique model. And the early conversations with companies have confirmed we have the right model.
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Q: What are your plans for next six months?
A: Great question. We have a stacked roadmap focused on further enhancing the customer shopping experience which is core to our philosophy. We will be adding enhanced visualizations for both IT shoppers as well as data buyers. And of course we will be adding new companies and their services to the Shop4Cloud catalog, spanning software, telecoms, cyber, etc… We do have one key item on the roadmap that I can’t share right now, but will be the game changer that exponentially grows the value of the company. We are excited about the next year.
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Q: How would you convince the reader to start using Shop4Clouds?
A: Anyone looking for cloud services right now should give us a try. The shopping experience takes minutes and is free. We feel confident that this DIY approach, simplifying IT for the user and earning points just for shopping will provide for a unique value-added experience. We are excited about our release, but much more to come…so stay tuned.
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