Many new MSPs start their business with an accounting product, a calendaring tool and a prayer, but they soon realize that they can do more–much more–in terms of managing the health of their business with a solution that gives them control over and visibility into their entire business process from prospect to invoice.
As an MSP, you have been long aware that your clients need to increase and standardize their IT security defenses to decrease the risk of cyberattacks and possible regulatory fines. However, did you know that new regulations could extend this risk to your own business?
Probably the single most important aspect of running a business is sales. Sales are the life-blood of the business: Without sales, you don’t have customers; without customers, you don’t have a business.
On the one hand, the old story goes, you invest in point solutions that are the best fit for your business’s particular needs, but then pay the price with suboptimal integration and interoperability between and among these technologies. On the other hand, you bite the bullet and commit to one vendor’s offerings. That way, you sacrifice the “best fit” but can be confident that the systems all work together seamlessly. This old model is particularly treacherous in an MSP 2.0 world, where you can’t afford to get locked into a closed technology community.
Small- and medium-sized companies are increasingly following their enterprise-class peers in leveraging cloud services to improve business performance. Their internal IT groups view the cloud as a strategic enabler, allowing them to offload routine, repetitive tasks; scale at will; and focus efforts on innovative IT projects to improve customer and end-user experience.
The case for automation to enable efficient, effective and proactive IT management seems unassailable.
Kaseya recently published its second annual IT Operations Benchmark Survey, which included results from 1,200 small and midsize companies (SMBs) representing over 50 industries and 20 countries. Here are several insights from the survey that are extremely valuable to the MSPs who are targeting these companies.
The MSP world is changing fast, with new technologies, new competition and ever-changing market forces, pushing MSPs toward their next phase of evolution. Kaseya calls this next phase MSP 2.0, since it is a natural extension of the MSP 1.0 phase that emerged after the Break/Fix era.
We often get caught up in discussions about “hot” markets for MSPs–and the list is growing, from security to cloud to mobile to firewall management. But it’s important to level set occasionally. The reason these markets are hot is because the technology requirements of the small- and medium-sized businesses that MSPs serve are undergoing a sea change.
M&A activity is remaking the MSP competitive landscape, with new announcements made almost daily. MSPs ignore this ongoing M&A “mania” at their own risk. Every MSP must evaluate all options and determine their preferred plan, whether it’s to buy, sell, merge or stay the current course.
Like many of you, I’ve been with the MSP market from the beginning–as VARs and ISVs first transitioned into break/fix shops and then into first-generation MSPs. We’re now facing another important inflection point in the MSP market evolution, driven by several critical developments.
If you’re not thinking about expanding your security services, you should be. At least, that’s the news from Kaseya’s 5th Annual Global MSP Pricing Survey.
I recently received an email about “time management and prioritization” from a colleague. I started thinking about what that means for an IT technician–and, specifically, what that means for the technician’s manager.
You know you need to ramp up your marketing efforts. Everyone is telling you so ― industry advisers, consultants, your sales team, your spouse. I’m sure your dog, if he could, would look up at you and say: “Dude, content marketing.”
High-growth MSPs are 24% more likely to offer a small number of comprehensive service bundles compared to their lower growth peers, according to Kaseya’s last annual MSP survey.
What’s the first adjective that comes to mind to describe excellence in MSP services delivery? If you’re a client, the word could be “effective. If you’re the IT technician, the word might be “consistent.” As an MSP owner, you might say “efficient.”
I was talking to an MSP the other day about onboarding. He had thought long and hard about how to optimize his onboarding practices, incorporating current best practices and expert recommendations. Despite all that hard work, however, he had overlooked several critical onboarding considerations that could result in even more satisfied clients, less client churn and, perhaps most importantly, stronger margins.
It’s no surprise that security was the No. 1 SMB concern among respondents surveyed for the recent CompTIA study, “Enabling SMBs with Technology.” As the report states, “Security is quickly becoming a top priority for all businesses as breaches occur more frequently and carry more serious repercussions.”
IT service providers face a number of challenges today. The rise of cloud technology means that many of the services they traditionally offer clients are now being handled off site, in the cloud. This has an immediate effect on revenue and profitability. However, IDaaS (identity as a service) can provide your business with a wide range of benefits while delivering vital solutions to your clients.
Beefing up and formalizing the referral process is key to MSPs’ growth.
