1. Consider platform decisions carefully. Plan your business according to the size and scale you’re hoping to achieve. Set goals. Take the time and do your due diligence. Make the right decisions for the various systems and platforms that you’re going to need to support your business.

What’s going to be your monitoring platform? What’s going to be your service-management engine?

These are the types of decisions you need to consider carefully so you don’t have to backtrack and make changes later. This can hinder productivity, break momentum and ultimately hurt your business.

2. Take a vendor-agnostic or multivendor approach. The expectations for what a managed service provides today has changed and evolved over the years. 20 years ago, it was the traditional reactive “break-fix” method where issues were resolved after they have happened.

Then it morphed into more of a service-management component. There’s a proactive element to things now — it’s not just managing and maintaining what you have, but making sure that you’re providing the advice and guidance to help clients evolve, upgrade and adopt newer technologies.

Vytas Kasniunas

Vytas Kasniunas

You need to be viewed as someone who can offer unbiased consultative advice. That is critical today to differentiate yourself in an MSP sense.

3. Focus on the end-user experience. This should be a rather obvious one, but it’s easy to get caught up in focusing on just the technology aspect.

Don’t be that guy.

The focus should always be on the end-user experience. As more systems have gone off-premise and into the cloud, managed services today means a solid managed cloud offering. Naturally. 

One of the key drivers of changes in this market is that end-user expectations for the quality of these services are increasing. MSPs must adopt a holistic mindset and provide visibility. Capitalize on the fast-changing expectations and constantly shifting landscape and lithely navigate the challenges. Continue to add value for your customers. This will, of course, eventually impact revenue.

So it’s less about the infrastructure and more about the experience of the end user. That should be the focus of the business.

Vytas Kasniunas is a partner and director of channel relationships and Operations at TetraVX. With almost 20 years of experience in the IT services industry, Vytas has spent the majority of his career working with clients and channel partners to find and deliver the technology solutions and services that best fit each organization’s business challenges. Vytas is a founding member of TetraVX and supports every aspect of the channel ecosystem, from technical innovation to marketing to business development. His extensive knowledge of the technology landscape enables him to understand the complexities and nuances of VARS, MSPs and technology consulting firms of all sizes.