MSPs provide essential services to their clients. They keep their operations humming along while continually upgrading technology, reinforcing their defenses against cybercrime, and protecting them from threats, outages and data losses.

But MSPs aren’t doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. This is a business, and profitability is key to growth and sustainability for MSPs of all shapes and sizes. In a services-based business model, MSPs must maximize their productivity, minimize their costs and seamlessly scale to accommodate a growing customer base.

At the same time, MSPs are being asked to manage more than ever. Not only is the volume of endpoints growing, thanks to increasing numbers of customers and devices to worry about, but the scope of MSP engagements is also broader.

Remote monitoring and management and managing cloud-based services might be the key value proposition that MSPs started with and that attracted early customers, but MSPs now have a far more complex array of solutions they must offer to meet customer demand and stave off competitors.

From password management to foothold monitoring to supporting a huge surge in remote work, MSPs have their hands full maintaining an up-to-date awareness of the key issues their customers face and the evolving landscape of needs to be met. Each different solution requires a commitment to staff training and the man-hours to get it all done.

 Variety Brings Complexity

For the humans performing this work, their job has gotten a lot more complicated and demanding. Customers that previously subscribed to only a handful of offerings now have a full buffet to choose from, and wise SMBs are investing in everything from disaster recovery as a service to dark web monitoring to compliance documentation.

While it’s a testament to the value MSPs offer their clients and the versatility of their staff, it’s also a serious logistical and management challenge. Keeping track of who bought what and making it all run like clockwork requires a ton of visibility and context switching that could strain the most talented multitaskers.

In addition to all that, MSPs must continually invest in training their staff to handle the diverse portfolio of products and solutions they provide. The only realistic way for MSPs to keep all their ducks in a row and maintain the level of service customers demand is via tools and technology.

The ability to operate successfully and profitably is attainable through automation and dashboards using a consistent user interface. However, the solutions MSPs rely on for their day-to-day management of thousands of endpoints and dozens of clients must continually evolve and improve to keep up with the constant addition of new solutions and enhancement for those already in place.

Searching for Simplicity

In our conversations with MSPs, we heard a constant refrain of struggling with juggling numerous solutions, interfaces and task lists. Those who cobbled together their solutions from various vendors complained extensively about how inefficient it was to manage so many disparate systems, along with the burden of training up staff to handle their unique nuances.

But even those who have settled on a unifying platform still found the array of offerings challenging to manage, and identified opportunities to streamline, standardize and simplify how staff interact with them.

At Kaseya, we’re devoted to ensuring our MSP partners are always armed with what’s needed to run a profitable business while delivering top-notch service. To that end, we’ve made a long-term commitment to steadily improve our suite of products to specifically increase the efficiency and productivity of MSP staff.

The goal is to minimize switching costs and increase the seamless integration between everything in the IT Complete platform. With Profit Fuel, Kaseya is perpetually on the lookout for opportunities to shave down what it takes MSPs to complete key tasks and maximize the output of staff.

With more time, MSPs can accomplish additional tasks and service more clients with the same headcount, letting these efficiencies improve margins and the overall profitability of MSP businesses. Not only will these enhancements boost staff performance, but they’re also proven to drive increased customer retention, as they’ll also see direct benefits from superior service and expanded offerings and capabilities.

Centralization and standardization is one pillar of the Profit Fuel approach. For example, MSPs can now use the Unitrends Unified Backup Portal to manage backups of cloud apps, Office365, and any appliances from a single location.

Another key part of the puzzle is leveraging AI in multiple domains. A self-healing remediation platform for fixing common problems MSPs encounter and relying on scripted workflows to tackle many regular functions frees up technicians’ time to concentrate on specific customer issues and more complex challenges.

MSPs are also able to limit the noise from various monitoring functions with conditional alerts that demand attention only for the issues each MSP has specifically prioritized. This ensures that real crises and security threats bubble up quickly and don’t get lost in the chaos of a thousand red flags and warnings.

By devoting resources each development cycle to hone our suite of products for maximum efficiency, Kaseya is helping MSPs achieve their profit targets and scale intelligently as they take on more clients and broaden their portfolio. In many cases, this can free up close to 25% of staff’s time and increase customer satisfaction by 74%.

Compared to a homegrown hodgepodge of point solutions from different vendors, MSPs can cut their labor costs by one-third. Those savings go straight to the bottom line, facilitating bigger margins or expanded budgets for hiring new staff, expanding sales and marketing activities, or upgrading critical infrastructure.

Sustainable Scalability

Looking ahead, MSPs see endless opportunities for their services and the growing complexities of delivering them. Clients are demanding a more diverse set of services. Enterprising cybercriminals are in a continual cat-and-mouse game of one-upmanship requiring an ever-expanding array of defensive measures. And the SMB market’s reliance on IT systems shows no signs of slowing down.

By taking an intentional, disciplined approach to not only rolling out new tools but investing in usability and integration, Kaseya’s Profit Fuel helps MSPs grow both their book of business and their margins with an ongoing stream of optimization enhancements. Learn more about how Kaseya is helping MSPs scale up smartly at https://www.kaseya.com/resource/maximizing-msp-profitability/.

Jim Lippie is GM & SVP Partner Development, Kaseya.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.