Every market we advise on, we have worked from the inside.™
We define the requirement, compare what the market actually offers, and negotiate the terms before anything is signed. The advisory work carries no cost to the client, and the recommendation is not attached to a quota.
Why an advisor and not a reseller
We find what you are already paying for.
Most organizations cannot produce a current list of circuits, seats, licenses, and renewal dates. We build that list first, and it regularly turns up billing for services that were decommissioned years ago.
We know what these deals actually close at.
A single buyer sees one quote and has no way to know whether it is a good one. We compare it against what the same services are closing at across many contracts, which is what makes a number negotiable.
We are still here after the signature.
A reseller earns on the order and moves on once it is booked. Our compensation follows the life of the contract, so activation problems, billing errors, and the renewal are still ours to handle.
Eight categories. One advisory model.
These are the eight categories where the buying process is complicated enough that an outside comparison is worth the time it takes. Advisory work in all eight carries no cost to the client.
AI
Roughly 80 percent of AI projects never deliver the value they were funded for, and 95 percent of pilots show no measurable return. The difference is decided before the build: the use case, the state of the data, and what it costs at full adoption.
Cloud Computing
Workloads land wherever they landed first, and the bill grows until someone compares colocation, private cloud, and the hyperscalers directly.
Contact Center, Unified Communications, and Voice Services
When copper retires or a contract renews, phone, contact center, and UC platforms get chosen quickly, usually without a real comparison.
Network
Bandwidth, sites, and contracts accumulate over a decade, so the network you are paying for stopped matching the one you use.
Security
The tooling is easy to buy and hard to compare, and overlapping products are usually cheaper to consolidate than to renew.
MSP Services
Choosing a managed provider means judging people and process instead of features, which is where references and scope language decide the outcome.
Cost Optimization
Most savings do not require a migration. They come from inventory nobody has reconciled, seats still billed for people who left, and renewals that priced at list because nobody was watching the window.
Data Center
Space and power are scarce and getting scarcer. Site selection, cross connects, and contract terms settled before you are committed to a footprint.
Two markets we know from the inside.
The same advisory model, applied where Elk Run has operated rather than sold. Veterinary practices and data center capacity get their own pages because the buying problems are their own.
Veterinary
There are not a lot of IT management classes taught in vet school. With dozens of new products available each year, it is impossible to know what will be the most impactful for your practice without someone who has worked inside it.
Learn more
Data Center
We are in the middle of a gold rush for space and power. We have decades of experience here. We know where the space is, where it will be, and how to negotiate the best business terms before you sign anything.
Learn moreFractional Channel Chief
If your partner program produces less than the headcount inside it suggests, the problem is usually structure rather than recruiting.
The work covers the whole program: margin and rebate structure, partner tiering, deal registration, onboarding, and the distributor relationships that carry volume.
Learn more- Program Design and Economics
Margin, tiers, and rebate mechanics you can still afford at volume.
- Partner Recruitment and Onboarding
Onboarding that ends at a first deal rather than a portal login.
- Enablement and Deal Registration
Published rules, enforced the first time they are tested.
- Distributor and TSD Relationships
Being quoted is the hard part. A distributor relationship is operational, not a logo on a website.
How it works
The same five steps every time. What changes is the market being compared. They are the condensed view of the seven-phase methodology we run on every engagement. They are the condensed view of the seven-phase methodology we run on every engagement.
Understand your environment.
Current inventory, contract dates, sites, and what the business actually needs the technology to do.
Define where you want to go.
Target state, growth requirements, and success criteria, all agreed before a single vendor is contacted.
Evaluate solutions.
The requirement goes to every provider that can meet it, and the responses come back on terms you can read side by side.
Define a solution and negotiate terms.
Pricing, term length, service levels, and exit language settled before signature rather than discovered on the first invoice.
Oversee activation.
We stay in the project through installation, porting, and acceptance, and escalate on your behalf when dates slip.
No product line. No inventory.
Elk Run Advisors has no product line and no inventory. Compensation comes from the vendors, the same structure that funds most carrier, cloud, and managed services sales, except that it is paid to an advisor who is not carrying a number for any one of them.
The largest lodging company in the world owns no properties. The largest transportation company owns no vehicles. With Elk Run, you gain access to the largest portfolio of technology services without the overhead of owning any of it.
That means the comparison can include every provider in the category, including the one already in place. A legitimate recommendation can be to keep the current arrangement and stop spending time on it, and that answer gets the same work as a migration.
Distribution partners
Work is placed through Telarus, Avant, Bridgepointe, and Sandler Partners, among the largest technology services distributors in the market.
The first conversation is a scoping call, not a pitch.
We ask what you have, what is expiring, and what is not working, then tell you whether there is work here worth doing. If Elk Run is not the right fit for the decision in front of you, we will say so.