MSPs: Don’t Give It Away For Free

One mistake that MSPs make is not monetising everything they offer clients, McBain said.

He explained: “We give away consulting, design and architecture work. We give away implementations and integrations as part of our monthly fee. The people that are being successful in the cloud today are not.

“Accenture is the biggest technology company in the world by employee size. They make an acquisition every seven business hours,” McBain said. “They added 150,000 people a year, in the last three or four years, to the company. They are absolutely all over this multiplier. When they look at Microsoft, they say, ‘How do I make $3 for every dollar that Microsoft makes?’ That’s how they build their strategy. And they don’t give away a bunch of stuff for free to go get the deal. If they do procurement, you have to pay them for their procurement service.

“It’s a different model and it’s the one right now that’s winning in the cloud. You’re not going to build an Accenture, but you should understand the language and the motions that make that successful,” the analyst concluded.