Why Bigfish is hooked on SoftwareOne expertise

The IT consulting firm saved AU$20,000 through a single call with SoftwareOne (formerly Crayon), and went on to leverage SoftwareOne’s experience and vendor ecosystem to cast its net much wider in the services it offers, and the clients it serves.

In the days of dial-up modems and unreliable PCs, Tristan Ellett was the student “good at computers”, who helped friends and relatives, and subsequently businesses in Melbourne, to find their footing in the new world of digital. Eventually, after graduating in 2005, he formalized his IT troubleshooting capabilities by founding Bigfish Technology. 

Twenty years later, in a completely altered technological landscape, Bigfish is a trusted name in Australian IT consulting, with a headcount of 35 and more than 500 customers based predominantly on the eastern seaboard. “Half of those have been with us for more than 10 years,” Ellett points out. 

The loyalty of the customer base and the steadfast growth of Bigfish during two decades of innovation speak to Ellett’s ability to listen to businesses and respond with carefully considered, well-matched solutions.  

The company is now known for solving challenges other IT businesses won’t touch. That may be designing systems to store and manage huge datasets, ensure ultra-fast performance, or meet unique requirements 

“What we do has changed,” Ellett continues. “There has also been a shift in how we do it. As the digital landscape has grown in complexity, we’ve come to rely increasingly on partners because we don’t know it all. And SoftwareOne is one of our mission-critical partners.” 

It all started with a phone call. 

“This was back in 2022. We had a Microsoft partner we were happy with. When it was time to re-sign with them, I asked: ‘You are giving us the best price, aren’t you?’ They assured me they were. I replied: ‘Before I sign on the dotted line, let me just make one phone call to double-check.’ That call was to SoftwareOne. 

“I’ll never forget it. I simply said: ‘Look, this is who we are, this is what we've got – how can you help us?’ SoftwareOne just asked different questions, leant in, offered to help, and with that one phone call, they saved us over AU$20,000 a year just by making a switch to them. 

“We liked the savings, obviously,” says Ellett, “but what mattered most was that our previous Microsoft vendor had been less than honest with us. A dealbreaker. Because if there’s no integrity in your partnership, there is no partnership.  

“What has characterized our relationship with SoftwareOne is competence and flexibility with a dose of good humor. But number one is trust. Trust and integrity. And that is what we get and what we offer.” 

The relationship between Bigfish and SoftwareOne has moved far beyond that initial pricing advantage. 

“With every opportunity, every challenge, one of the first things we do is put in a call with SoftwareOne to ask: ‘What do you know about this, and can you help?’ – and they always can. Leveraging SoftwareOne’s deep Microsoft expertise and its niche product knowledge, we land on the best solution for our clients who trust us to do that for them.  

“To give you an example, we provide Teams Calling to a client who wants to record all their calls, use AI transcription, and get sentiment feedback on these conversations. We contacted SoftwareOne, and they got on the case.  ‘We have got a partner for that,’ was the immediate response, ‘so let us introduce you to this key person.’ Before you know it, you’ve got full clarity, all the capabilities, fully integrated, from just one call with SoftwareOne.” 

Bigfish has considerable in-house technical expertise, so it seldom needs much help with implementation. “But for new products, we’re onboarded with training from SoftwareOne product specialists. We always want to level up our skillset, and with AI, you are constantly having to catch up with the latest advances and opportunities.  

“Recently, our partner success manager reached out to SoftwareOne and asked if they could come in for a session on the best ways to implement AI and create business value for our clients with this amazing technology. No problem – it’s never a problem forSoftwareOne. They came and did a session with our team on how we can do more with the Microsoft AI stack. That’s the expertise that SoftwareOne works with all day, every day. Having access to this expertise has been a game changer for Bigfish, and a significant competitive advantage because the range and complexity of what we can offer our clients has broadened.” 

Partnering with SoftwareOne means Bigfish is now swimming in its ecosystem of vendors, “another agent of change”, Ellett adds.  

“We don’t need to go to the market to source vendors; SoftwareOne now is our market, you could say. They’ve already done the hard work of vetting these vendors for us. We network with them at SoftwareOne events, which puts us in touch with the latest innovations. This is one of the things I did not foresee when I contacted SoftwareOne about our Microsoft licensing: that the relationship we built from there would mean that there was almost nothing that we couldn’t do to help our clients level up and get out of the break-fix cycle. I ask SoftwareOne: ‘Do you do this?’, and they invariably reply: ‘We’ve got a solution for that’.” 

Another benefit the partnership provides is early access to an annual market intelligence study compiled by Forrester, called The Future of Operations, which analyzes the buying trends and expertise gaps of SMBs in APAC.  

“This gives us a window into the future,” says Ellett. “We work in the SMB space with the medical industry, accountancy firms, construction, and the not-for-profit segment, among many others. When the corporate world is doing something, SMB would typically follow. So The Future of Operations is a great source of insight for us.” 

But in the end, Ellett returns to the idea of trust. 

“I'm going to use that word integrity again,” he says, “because of the opportunities it opens up. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a trusted partner that get the best information in a busy world that is flooded with technology products – for us, that has been transformational. 

“Partnership for Bigfish is everything,” Ellett concludes, “because our customers want to rely on us. We have to have good partnerships to be able to deliver what we do. SoftwareOne is a key part of that. We feel appreciated, valued, and cared for by SoftwareOne. 

“And it all started from that one phone call with one service, not realizing what we didn’t know and how much more was out there.”