News Feature | July 23, 2015

10 Things You Should Know About CompTIA Trustmarks

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

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At Channel Transitions Newark powered by Business Solutions on June 4 at the DoubleTree Newark Airport, Rob Cosentino, manager, CompTIA Business Trustmark, explained what a Trustmark is, how it can help impact businesses, and some of the Trustmark’s important features and qualifications.

Ultimately, the object for any managed services provider (MSP) is leveraging or differentiating yourself from the other MSPs in the marketplace. And that, Cosentino explains, is where Trustmarks come into play. Here are 10 things you should know about CompTIA IT Business Trustmarks and how they can help you position yourself better in the MSP marketplace.

  1. To obtain a Trustmark, you will identify intelligent business practices, reveal what those intelligent business practices are, and recognized how to use them in your business, by providing a checklist of tools.
  2. The Trustmark is awarded following a third-party evaluation that gives you a little more credibility when you are in the marketplace, and it helps validate you with your customers.
  3. The Trustmark covers five key areas, including a code of conduct, operations, management, finance — both in terms of risk and liability and HR policy — and services.
  4. Cosentino explained that CompTIA will examine HR policies, to maximize opportunities and mitigate risks when working with employees. If you do not have specific HR policies on the books, he explained, you are opening yourself up to more risk.
  5. From the services perspective, the Trustmark assesses the types of services offered— reaching out to actual clients for their feedback on your services with the goal of “helping validate that you are providing the right services the right way.”
  6. According to Cosentino, “What’s interesting is once we surveyed our Trustmark holders, over 88 percent said the biggest value was actually going through the process, actually filling those holes or those gaps in their knowledge base or in their documented procedures to make them more effective in the field.”
  7. Four out of five Trustmark recipients recommend obtaining a Trustmark, and 72 saw an increase in their ability to function with those best practices.
  8. The Trustmark also provides access to additional tools and resources to help leverage it out in the marketplace, including an embedded logo and links to your individual Trustmark page on the CompTIA website that describes the Trustmark certification process.
  9. Trustmark also provides as co-branded fliers and 100-word copy for press releases or Twitter feeds.

The Trustmark certification also includes a CompTIA Trustmark Directory that discusses all different Trustmarks by geographic location.