Your dedicated partners for strategic growth
Managed IT · Jun 26, 2025
My focus each day is simple: To keep earning our place as a trusted advisor by helping clients navigate complex decisions, connect technology to real business outcomes and stay ahead in a constantly changing landscape.
This isn't about fixing what's broken or maintaining what's working. It's about something fundamentally different, which means helping ensure every technology decision, every IT investment and every strategy pivot directly contributes to our clients' success.
Our Client Strategy team at TELUS Business was built to do more than deliver recommendations. As part of our TELUS Fully Managed services, we guide the conversations that shape long-term decisions. We act as an extension of our clients' teams, helping them navigate change, prioritize investments and build a clear, strategic path forward. We're your strategic partner who understands that technology is only valuable when it drives real business outcomes.
The strategic partnership difference
Most SMBs experience IT in either reactive support when things break, or vendor relationships focused on selling solutions. What's missing is the strategic layer that connects technology decisions to your business goals.
Our team is built differently, taking a more proactive approach. We start by understanding your business deeply, such as your industry challenges, growth plans, competitive pressures and operational realities. Only then do we develop technology roadmaps that make sense for your unique situation and where you want to go.
What a strategic partnership looks like in practice
Our team is uniquely strategic because we pair Client Strategy advisors with deeper technical knowledge alongside vCIOs who bring broader business alignment. Together, we deliver a more complete advisory experience, one that connects long-term business goals with the technical decisions needed to achieve them.
We combine deep technical expertise with passionate people who genuinely care about your success. This integrated approach means you're not just getting technical support; you're getting a comprehensive team that understands both the strategic and tactical sides of technology.
Here's what this looks like in our day-to-day work with SMB clients:
Strategic business reviews (SBRs): Every quarter, we sit down with our clients to review business progress and adjust their technology strategy accordingly. Did you land that big contract? Let's plan for scaling your infrastructure. Entering a new market? We help ensure your security and compliance frameworks support that expansion.
Proactive technology planning: Instead of waiting for systems to fail or become obsolete, we maintain annual technology roadmaps that anticipate your needs. This means budgeting for upgrades before they become urgent, planning migrations during low-impact periods and helping ensure your technology supports rather than constrains your growth.
Virtual CIO access: Many SMBs need C-level strategic thinking but can't justify a full-time CIO. Our Virtual CIOs provide that executive-level perspective, helping you evaluate major technology decisions, assess vendor proposals and help ensure your IT investments align with your business strategy.
Mike Mahoney, one of our Virtual CIOs, explains: "The biggest mistake I see SMBs make is treating technology as an expense rather than an investment. When you align your IT strategy with your business strategy from day one, technology becomes your competitive advantage, not just a necessary cost."
Industry-specific guidance: A law firm's technology needs differ vastly from a manufacturing company's. Our advisors understand these nuances, providing guidance that considers regulatory requirements, industry best practices and sector-specific growth patterns.
How we take a personalized approach
What makes our approach authentic is the relationships we build. Our Client Strategy advisors become extensions of your team. They understand your business cycles, know your pain points and celebrate your wins.
I've seen our advisors help a growing accounting firm get through their first busy season on new cloud infrastructure, without a single outage. We've worked with a large retail chain to implement a security framework that met new compliance regulations ahead of schedule. And we've supported a manufacturing client through a major digital transformation, modernizing operations while keeping production running smoothly.
As Client Success Manager Azzra says, "A real strategic partnership means being invested in outcomes, not just deliverables. When our clients succeed, we succeed."
Beyond technology: The business impact
Our success isn't measured in uptime percentages or ticket resolution times. It's measured in business outcomes like revenue growth enabled by scalable technology, operational efficiency gains from strategic automation, competitive advantages from proactive security postures and peace of mind that comes from predictable, well-planned IT investments.
We've helped clients:
- Eliminate on-premises infrastructure entirely through full cloud migrations, reducing overhead and unlocking new agility
- Implement comprehensive security frameworks that not only met regulatory requirements but strengthened their defence against evolving cyber threats
- Seamlessly scale from a single location to a multi-site operation, ensuring consistent IT standards and user experience across every site
- Consolidate and modernize legacy systems to streamline workflows, improved visibility and supported smarter, faster decision-making
Your strategic partner, not just your IT provider
What ultimately sets our Client Strategy team apart is the end-to-end experience we create by working closely with our Service Delivery and Professional Services teams. While we focus on strategy and planning, our Service Delivery team helps your daily operations run smoothly and our Professional Services team executes the transformative projects we plan together. This integration means our strategic recommendations aren't theoretical; they're grounded in operational reality and backed by proven execution capabilities.
At the end of the day, our Client Strategy team exists to help ensure that technology accelerates your business rather than complicate it. We translate your business vision into actionable technology strategy, provide ongoing guidance as your business evolves and align every IT decision to drive your success.
Authored by:
Chris Blay
Director, Client Strategy
Chris Blay, Director of Client Strategy at TELUS Business, leads advisors and Virtual CIOs who align technology with SMB business outcomes. He has 15+ years transforming how businesses approach tech planning.
