Managed Services Marketing: Got Research?
Face it: People love data. They love statistics. And they embrace research. One of the fastest ways for managed service providers (MSP) to generate marketing buzz is to publish a research report that’s full of key statistics. The report can also serve as a key sales tool. Consider, for instance, a recent research effort by The Planet, a major hosting provider.
In early June 2009, The Planet published a report concluding that the company’s hosted IT infrastructure reduces operating costs for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) by 51 percent over a three-year period.
Yes, the statistic is self-serving to The Planet’s business. But looking ahead, The Planet’s sales team is armed with data and customer anecdotes that can potentially accelerate sales cycles and buying decisions.
Finding the Data
The Planet retained Stratecast, a division of Frost and Sullivan, to produce the IT hosting research report. The deliverables include an extended white paper that The Planet employees can now share with existing and target customers.
Here’s an overview:
The report weighs the three-year expenditures of an in-house, “do it yourself” (DIY) approach, versus subscribing to hosted IT infrastructure services from The Planet. The study evaluates the total cost of operation based on the price of servers, storage devices and other hardware; software licenses; security; lease premiums; dedicated Internet access; facility costs; power; and in-house personnel. In the study, a customer who would have spent $226,000 on a DIY approach by comparison would have spent $111,093 to implement a hosted IT infrastructure solution.
If you’re mulling a research study for marketing purposes, keep in mind that numerous MSPs and vendors launch research studies each year. Two recent examples include a study from HoundDog Technology (continuing now) and Untangle’s MSP Benchmark Study (released in June 2008).
In some cases, the studies involve third-party research firms. In other cases, the efforts involve a setting up a simple survey using a tool like SurveyMonkey.
Start small. One idea: Maybe your research identifies customer satisfaction levels with your services.
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Joe,
For me, research is a huge black hole in managed services. I think one of the biggest missing links is a study that shows the reduction in downtime by switching from break-fix to managed services for small and medium businesses. For me, I can build this huge compelling argument about reducing downtime, the cost/savings, and all of that, but I don’t have a good source to quote when they say “you said you can reduce downtime by 50%, where did you get that figure?” This is the keystone that is missing from an otherwise slam-dunk sales process. Maybe one of the MSP platform vendors has some info they can share with the community?
I’ve posted on MSP Alliance forums about this, and asked what it would take to find someone to do this research. Other MSPs seemed interested, but I don’t know of any efforts by anyone to do a real compelling study on this. Maybe a univerity like MIT or someone has an IS MBA student who could do a thesis or something.
Any ideas?
David Dempsey
President
Managed Data
http://www.managed-data.com
David: You’ve got some great points. The big challenge is the study has to be ongoing… Where an MSP (or software company) actually tracks specific customer networks (A) before managed services and (B) after managed services are implemented. No doubt, it would be a valuable study… …
Anybody going to pursue this?
Bueller? Bueller?
Maybe a researcher could do a big comparison of a big set of small businesses using break/fix, and small businesses using MSP services, and compared downtime?
I think it would be a useful study for one of the MSP trade organizations to take the lead on, maybe get some sponsors like Microsoft, MSP platform vendors, CompTIA, etc. to help out with…