Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
Bringing Together Local Businesses and Neighbors of South of the River
Good Neighbor Podcast: South of the River
EP#115 Tech Solutions Made Simple
Monica Swanson of MonRoe Business Solutions joins us to discuss how fractional IT services can help businesses manage their technology needs at a fraction of the cost. We explore how business leaders can offload their IT responsibilities to focus on their core operations while ensuring their technology infrastructure supports their growth objectives.
• Fractional IT means hiring experienced leaders part-time (like 25% of their time) for 25% of the cost
• Technology should be a business enabler, not implemented for its own sake
• Most growing companies focus on their core business while technology needs get neglected
• MonRoe Business Solutions helps bridge the gap between current IT systems and future business projections
• Monica brings 30+ years of enterprise experience from global corporations like Thomson Reuters
• Solutions are right-sized for each business, not unnecessarily complex
• Monica approaches IT with a business mindset from her background in both IT and HR leadership
• The "IT party planner" approach: providing strategy while bringing in specialized experts for implementation
• Recently certified as both women-owned and minority-owned business
• Free IT Health Check tool available on the website for self-assessment
Visit MonroeBusinessSolutions.com or email MonicaRSwanson@gmail.com to learn how fractional IT services can help your business
MonRoe Business Solutions
Monica Swanson
Monicarswanson@gmail.com
is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Mark Bratton.
Speaker 2:Well, good afternoon to the Good Neighbors Podcast, number 115. And today we have somebody that's going to help us manage our IT technical solutions and services, which is crazy by me, because I need lots of help. Monica Swanson, with Monroe Business Solutions, is going to talk to us today. So hello, monica, how are you doing today?
Speaker 3:Hello Mark, happy to be here, Excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, we're going to have some fun. We finally got some sunshine out here after all the crappy weather. But we're ready to go. We're ready to get into this high technology, because I'm guessing you're going to probably tell us a little bit how I can make myself feel better with some really good technology today. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your business.
Speaker 3:Talk a little bit about yourself and your business. Yeah, so Monroe Business Solutions. I focus on IT fractional work or IT project consulting, and I know some people are new to the term IT fractional. It basically means that you get to hire some great experience on a part-time basis, so fractional. You can hire a leader in marketing and IT and sales and you can hire them, let's say, 25%. That means you get 25% of their time but you're also paying them 25% of the salary. So that makes some great leaders out there available to midsize businesses.
Speaker 2:That's amazing and that alone should attract some people. Because you know and one of the questions I want to share with you, because I hear it all the time the myths and misconceptions and I'm guessing that's a big one when somebody's thinking I got to spend all kinds of my budget on IT yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, no, you don't have to. You can spend what you want, right, you need to spend what you need. So my focus is about helping business leaders who are overburdened with their technology. Chances are they've been focusing on their core business, which makes perfect sense, right? Focus on your product and your services, but you need technology as well if your business is going to grow is, but you need technology as well if your business is going to grow. So, if you can envision a company that has they're growing, right, they've been growing. They plan to continue to grow. Chances are they've not been spending as much time on their technology as they could have. If they have been great, then I'm probably not going to be able to help them as much. But if they've been focusing on their core products and their technology is already a bit outdated, it's not going to meet their business needs, definitely not in a couple of years, as they continue to grow. So what I can do is come in and understand what is their current state of their technology and what is their future business projection and then fill that gap. Make sure they have the right technology systems to support them so they can continue to ignore their business or, excuse me, ignore their IT because their IT is working effectively for them and they can focus on their business.
Speaker 3:So let me give you a couple examples. So most companies would have a customer relationship management system or a CRM. You probably have some HR technology. You might have some enterprise resource processing or some ERP systems. You definitely have laptops, network security concerns All of that is going on right and you need to be managing all of that so it's meeting your business need. So I can come in and help assess what's going on. How can we basically fit that gap? I think a lot of business leaders end up doing everything and after a while you need to offload something and that's where I can come and help. They can take off that IT hat, hand it to me and I can help them either with a specific project or just set their IT roadmap and then help execute on that.
Speaker 2:And it sure sounds like you can pretty much help out any size company, is that true?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so. Just to share a little bit more about my history. So I have over 30 years experience in very large global corporations. Thompson Reuters is over 50,000 employees when I was there and Cargo is over 160,000 employees. I've had global teams, a lot of IT strategy that I can then take and apply.
Speaker 3:Now what I don't want people to think is oh my goodness, she's going to come up with big, complex solutions. That's absolutely not my approach. My approach is the right size IT systems aligned to your business need. But if you can get somebody with experience like mine, and I can come in and help you at a fraction of the cost, if you can hire me at a part time basis. I will say again like IT, you never want to do IT for IT. Right? It's all about turning IT systems into a business enabler right, technology is just the tool into a business enabler. Right, technology is just the tool. My job is to help businesses use it in a way that actually moves the needle on the business impact. So you're accomplishing what you need. Do you have data for data-driven decisions? Do you have automation of how things are working? I don't wanna get too complex, but it's really. You don't wanna worry about the technology. Let me do that, and you can focus on your business systems, because they're working great in the background.
Speaker 2:What a great, great approach. I've got a lot of businesses that I support that are now into video production and then you got to put it on into your computer and then be able to put it on the social media sites. I mean, I think some people think that that just happens out of the blue and I can see people need to talk to Monica for that one. So now you said you've been in this business just a couple of years. I heard Not really, but what made you get into this? Because that was a fairly long time ago and the technology is nothing today versus 20 plus years ago.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I graduated from college with an IT background. I did systems developer work, architecture, all that. So it was all great and fun when my kiddos were really young. So it was all great and fun when my kiddos were really young. I wanted to spend more time at home, so I was part time for 13 years, which is not your normal career path in a large global corporate environment, especially back then. My kiddos are now grown and on their own, so I had to really navigate a different career path. That was the first time that I stepped out of IT and spent time in the business. But I'm telling you, mark, that was a differentiator for me, because I now have leadership roles in HR as well as leadership roles in IT.
Speaker 3:So I'm really approaching this from a business mindset and not just trying to implement new technology. You know, from a tech point of view, you don't need to know how the engine works. From a business leader's point of view, it's basically you need to point the car in the right direction and you need to make sure your team is all in the right car, and then I'll worry about the motor. I'll make sure it's moving along at the right speed. That's the technology and the engine that I'll make sure it's moving along at the right speed. That's the technology and the engine that I'm going to manage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'm going to maybe help our listeners out there, so I'm just going to articulate this a little differently. So you've got accounts, receivables and payables over here, you got purchasing and stuff over here, and then you sales department over there with the CRM system. Are you saying that you, monroe, you and Monroe put all that together for for your clients?
Speaker 3:Well, I will say yes and because, um, I am a solopreneur, I have my own business. I'm going to be working on the strategy, but I'm not going to do all the hands-on work. I don't. I would not recommend me doing all the handwork. I'm going to bring in the right people to do that hands-on work at a less expensive price. So I'm going to come in and do the strategy. And let's say that you need somebody to specifically do X. Let's say it's an integration between your CRM and your your people data or your customer data. I'm going to bring in an expert that knows how to do it. They're going to be less expensive. They're going to be, you know, get it done faster.
Speaker 3:I did that back in my career, but that's not my hands on anymore, right? So if I come up with an analogy, let's say you have a party planner and the party planner is going to figure out do you host the party in your house or do you need a bigger venue? What type of invitation do you want? Are you going to make the food? Are you going to hire a caterer? Are you going to decorate yourself? Are you going to have somebody come in and decorate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So that party planner, that's me, except I'm your it planner.
Speaker 3:And if we decide we're going to do it all on our own. Great do it. But chances are for a company that's growing. We might need to hire that cater for the food right. I might need to hire somebody with that specific technology experience. They come in, get it done and then they can move on that, there you go.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you answered that perfectly. Um, again it's. You have an amazing business to share, so, but After all this and you get to deal with people like me and all these different people what brings you down to balancing your life? What do you do? When you get out of that office and you're going to go chill, what do you do?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, being from Minnesota, we better embrace the snow and the ice, otherwise why are we there? But I don't want to embrace too much snow and ice. So my husband and I love to snowmobile, we go on some snow. So my husband, I love to snowmobile, we go on some snowmobile trips. I love to golf, so I golf in Minnesota. We also spend quite a bit of time in Florida, so I'm able to basically book and winter a bit in Minnesota by by being in Florida a bit more. I love to travel. My family is actually from a different country, so travel all over the world through, even when I was in college. But I love to travel, cook, eat, read, all kinds of fun things like that. Okay, tangent topic. I just have to tell you, because I'm excited about this, I just got my business certified as women-owned and minority-owned, since I'm from a.
Speaker 3:Hispanic background. So that's another proud accolade I just accomplished.
Speaker 2:Super exciting. That's awesome. I'm incredible to hear about that because in my world and we support that all the time I've been able to go to a few events the women-owned business, entrepreneur events and I love listening and watching the excitement that you bring. It's just different. It's just, I don't know, maybe refreshing. And then me being in Prior Lake, I support our diversity in our school system. We have a very diverse community. I love it. I'm able to work in the community with the kids and I work over at Strive as a mentor. But there's nothing better than partnering with somebody that understands it, and I can see and hear that in your voice. But you said that that that's, that's good and I'm proud of you. That's awesome. I'm excited that you're here for that. That's part of it.
Speaker 3:I love the Prior Lake roots as well. I graduated from Prior Lake way back and my kids did as well, and I actually was on the ISD 719 technology roadmap board. This was quite a while ago but helping set some of the tech roadmap for the school district way back as well.
Speaker 2:Oh, well it's. You must've did a good job, because it's still there and it hasn't been. It's been changed, but um ever evolving right. Yeah, and I got a feeling I'm gonna learn more and more and more as I serve this wonderful community. So, um, with that, we're going to kind of uh, kind of wind down a little bit. Is there anything about your business that you want to share? We've got a little bit of time here. How to get ahold of you? What's the easiest way to engage with Monroe?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I know that technology can be confusing for companies and so I'm not a high pressure salesperson by any means. So what I'm trying to do is also educate. I want to help some ideas off me to better understand you know what should I be doing and you know, am I even the right person? They might be asking a question and I'm like you know that's not me. Let me refer you because I do have a large referral network as well with other fractionals or other areas. I also have an IT health check, which I think is really cool and helpful.
Speaker 3:It's a free tool that I can send to people. It's available on my website and it's completely on your own. So it's complete self-paced. You know you can play with it and say, okay, let me, let me think, worst case, let me answer. It's only six questions and you can get some immediate feedback. And then you know, hey, let me change the answers a little bit, because this is where I think I'm going to be next by the end of the year change your answers and, you know, get different types of feedback. But I think that's also a helpful tool and it allows people to maybe to have some offline thought process on their technology and then they can reach to me and hey, this is what's going on in my business. What do you think?
Speaker 2:Love that, love that. That's that sounds amazing, because many times we're a little shy. We we a lot of I mean, I'm my past businesses. I was a little proud, I thought things were going good and didn't really know how to reach out for, for a special help that you could give to me and move me into the next level, and I think that sounds like you do a good job of helping business owners and entrepreneurs move their business to that next level, which many times is IT.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, thanks, yeah, and I do. I just have that aspiration to help. You know I'm not going to be working for free, but you know I do have tools that are free and I can, you know, offer consultation sessions et cetera. So helping people, kind of think about it. Not, I'm not expecting somebody to call me, have a 10 minute conversation and hire me. I know it's an ongoing conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I, I, I hear you say that In my business. It's hard sometimes to understand that we all have budgets and without meeting you, we may not know what to plug in for a budget. So, yes, we need just honest questions, honest answers, so that we can all come up with saying, hey, you don't need this today, but you're going to need it if you grow at X amount. Now you can start figuring in Do you need an today, but you're going to need it if you grow at X amount. Now you can start figuring in Do you need an employee? Do you need my services? I love that that. That growth pattern that you're sharing, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, good point. And it's also like planning ahead, right? You know, if you have some initial conversations and think, how can I plan for this in the next six months, or something that's you know that's definitely opens those opportunities as well.
Speaker 2:Awesome, Well, tell everybody how to get ahold of Monica at Monroe Business Solutions.
Speaker 3:Yes, well, I have my Monroe Business Solutions website. I'm assuming we can post that someplace, of course. Okay, so via my website there's a contact me, request my health check, a lot more information on my services, links to some informational blogs and articles so people can learn from those as well. And, yeah, I'm available to meet, contact me via email, phone any of that works.
Speaker 2:So your email is.
Speaker 3:My email is MonicaRSwanson at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:Yep. And then your website, your awesome website you talked about.
Speaker 3:Yes, it is MonroeBusinessSolutionscom.
Speaker 2:And I would urge every business owner that we talk to, and I would urge every business owner that we talk to to share Monica's story and learn more about Monroe Business Solutions so that we can move ourselves ahead. But for today, we are going to put a wrap on the Good Neighbors podcast with Monica Swanson and Monroe Business Solutions. I wish everybody, like always, to have a great day and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:I wish everybody, like always, to have a great day and we'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast South of the River. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to GNPSouthoftherivercom. That's GNPSouthoftherivercom, or call 952-592-3737.