The Future of MSP

10 IT Trends for 2022 that MSPs should know

admin — Thu, 10 Feb 2022 21:45:33 +0000

10 IT Trends for 2022 that MSPs should know admin Thu, 02/10/2022 - 15:45 Trends ��Ƶɫ

For the last two years, uncertainty and unpredictability have reigned supreme in the IT world. The world of work was turned on its head by a global pandemic, and the message was clear: businesses that change too quickly to stay afloat would sink.

But while many businesses have taken a reactive approach to IT changes, 2022 is ushering in a new era. It’s time to start planning again. Here are IT 10 trends CompTIA predicts for 2022.

1 The definition of “workplace” will continue to change

If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that work can happen anywhere—for better or worse. Working from home full-time has been a gift for some and a burden for others, and how employees want to move ahead is deeply personal for each person.

It’s clear that companies will need to be flexible in how they accommodate their employees’ needs in the year ahead. Some employees may want to remain remote while others will want to hold onto a hybrid approach.

Technologically speaking, being able to support remote work has encouraged most IT departments to reorganize their list of priorities, pushing them to formalize and legitimize band-aid solutions so that they can scale properly. For many organizations, this means a renewed commitment to digital transformation.

2 Travel for business will be more measured

For a long time and for many people, travel was part and parcel of working in the technology industry. When the pandemic ground things to a halt, however, businesses were forced to find new ways to connect. Video calls and virtual conferences became the norm, and rather than highlight why travel was so essential, changing things up actually proved that it was a lot less necessary than many had assumed.

In 2022 and beyond, travel for work is going to look a lot different. Firstly, approved business travel will need to have a proven use case and ROI. Secondly, smaller regional conferences and hybrid/virtual conferences will be more common. Thirdly, more employees will be empowered to turn down travel requests, which is especially important now that younger generations of workers have cited virtual collaboration as sufficient for innovation, as well as concerns over climate change making them less enthusiastic about hopping on the next flight.

3 The never-ending quest for regulation continues

Regulation has long been a seemingly unsolvable puzzle in the tech industry, but the pressure to reduce monopolistic practices and protect consumer privacy has only increased in recent years. Creating laws around these issues hasn’t gotten any easier, though; antitrust concepts and business practices vary by country, and increased globalization makes it difficult to contain any one rule in a meaningful way.

Going forward, the onus is shifting to tech companies rather than regulatory bodies. All tech companies will have to work to fully comprehend the unintended consequences of their output, and to try to build a framework that encourages responsible behavior. Tech firms need to help lawmakers understand the issues, examine their own operations, and practice transparency with their clients to address these concerns.

4 Technology budgets will grow—stealthily.

Over the last few years, CIOs have been expected to do more with less as IT budgets shrank. Today, though, businesses are moving away from the assumption that IT is a cost center that needs to be tightly controlled.

Today, businesses are taking a more strategic point of view in how they approach their IT budgets, but this shift in perspective isn’t so obvious at first glance. Stealth IT, where business units procure their own technology, makes it hard to track overall technology budgets.

Technology can also be an embedded component of business solutions, making it difficult to be explicitly defined. Take the example of a custom website built as part of a marketing campaign. The entire budget may be assigned to marketing, even though technology was built to meet the objective.

Overall, even when tech spending grows, there may not be tech-specific line items to back it up in the books. Today’s technology opportunities are more than hardware installations and software licensing, and they’re more integrated into businesses’ long-term goals than ever.

5 Cybersecurity is getting more proactive

When it comes to cybersecurity, more has changed in the last five years than the decades that preceded them. For a long time, cybersecurity was planned out based on the idea that a firewall and antivirus software were enough to keep out the bad guys. However, the move to cloud services and mobile-first workforces has eroded the idea of the secure perimeter, and the idea of a defensive approach.

Today’s security breaches can lay dormant and undetected within networks for a long time, and more businesses are becoming wise to the idea that a proactive approach is necessary to keep data and users truly safe. More organizations are starting to use their own resources or outside partners to probe systems and find any weak spots.

Both offensive and defensive approaches are necessary to keep modern workplaces safe, which includes intentional strategy along with new investments in infrastructure.

6 Channel cybersecurity still has strides to make

CompTIA’s 2021 State of the Channel study, found that 36% of channel businesses are either only just beginning to formulate their cybersecurity strategies, are behind schedule, or not involved in cybersecurity at all. Of the 64% that are on target, only 28% of them consider cybersecurity a strategic specialty, meaning the majority do not offer more sophisticated tools and services beyond the basics of antivirus and firewall protection.

While there are understandable risks and challenges that come with operating a successful cybersecurity practice, there’s really no excuse for not specializing in this space. Considering how much cyberattacks against MSPs have increased recently, these companies can’t afford to expose themselves and put their customers at risk.

7 More channel companies will take the consulting route

How customers buy technology has fundamentally changed. Product-centric, transactional business models no longer cut it for MSPs, and more channel providers have been moving to more of a consulting-based offering. The evidence is clear: helping customers run their businesses better with the right technology is a lucrative avenue that’s both profitable and in high demand.

Consultants have the opportunity to play the role of expert for businesses that need that expertise. In 2022, more channel firms will realize that reselling products and services in a cloud marketplace era is fading—but there’s lots of opportunity to expand into the kind of consulting that’s so sorely needed.

8 Chip supply chain constraints will cause a wake-up call

Without a reliable supply chain, even the best-engineered product won’t get built or delivered on time. Today’s global semiconductor shortage has affected smartphone, PC, and other chip-dependent industries in the wake of COVID.

For decades, just-in-time manufacturing has allowed suppliers and providers to stop stockpiling inventory and parts, and respond in as close to real-time as possible to demand. The chip shortage threw this method into question, however, with some now wondering if it might be wiser to keep inventory, parts, and components close to home, regardless of whether customer orders have been placed yet.

Many channel firms will have a decision to make in 2022: do they want to start holding some inventory of their own in the event of backlogs?

9 Software development will get more granular

Software development used to be left to large companies who could afford the resources and infrastructure to participate. As the foundational computing platform has stabilized and technology has become democratized, however, more companies have started adding their own software development skills.

Today’s companies have lowered the barrier to entry considerably by relying on open source and microservices. Cloud computing has also allowed companies to stand up multiple environments for development, testing, and production without needing capital investment.

As capacity and capabilities have grown, however, skills supply has flagged. This has led to organizations trying to compensate by breaking applications down into bite-size pieces. These smaller functions can be refreshed more quickly and reused throughout a comprehensive software strategy.

Whether this is an evolution of microservices or a new approach entirely, the trend of reusable pieces of software will simplify development but add challenges in integration and architecture management. To keep up, many companies will also accelerate their DevOps efforts, with more advanced companies exploring AIOps to further automate their established processes.

10 Data management will drive an analytics revolution

Today’s companies are aggressively pursuing analytics as a strategy in order to understand past transactions, improve operations, and predict future opportunities. But while data science is one of the fastest-growing roles, for most organizations managing data in-house is still a very early endeavor.

In fact, many companies are struggling to build a structured foundation of corporate data, and will have to start with the basics. This requires an understanding of where data lives and how it is used, as well as a classification of all data to define requirements around usage and security. It also requires a strategy for data to outline goals and identify trade offs.

Only organizations that have updated their storage schemes, or ensured that they are getting the most out of traditional tools like relational databases, will be ready to move on to tools that work with unstructured data, algorithms that leverage machine learning, or models that rely on real-time data streams.

Read the full report

If you want to get more in-depth on CompTIA’s predictions for 2022, you can read the full CompTIA IT Industry Outlook 2022 here.

The Future of MSP

Everything you need to know about Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX)

admin — Wed, 15 Dec 2021 17:12:22 +0000

Everything you need to know about Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX) admin Wed, 12/15/2021 - 11:12 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

If you’re a Microsoft employee, a vendor with an MSFT domain, a Microsoft Partner, or an MVP, you’ve likely heard of Microsoft Customer Digital Experiences (CDX). It’s designed for people like you to demonstrate Microsoft technology and products with hands-on interaction. You also probably know that it offers three main types of experiences: demos, interactive guides, and customer immersion experiences.

But do you know how to make the most of it? If not, fear not: we’ve put together a quick guide to help you out.

First things first: How access works

Access to CDX is granted to all valid Microsoft partners and MVPs. If you’re a Partner, you must use the work account associated with your Microsoft Partner Center for authentication. For MVP users, you must be a current, approved user in order to access.

To sign in, ��Ƶɫ must use a work account that is enrolled into the Microsoft Partner Center, associated with their MPN account, and authenticated through their work domain's Azure Active Directory (Microsoft Partner Center Help can support any setup issues you encounter).

Demos: More common, less involved

Overall, demos make up most of the experiences available through CDX. A demo is a deep one-to-many or one-to-one presentation led by Microsoft and Partner facilitators that incorporates little to no audience participation.

Generally, a demo is best for an audience of practitioners, ITDMs, IT pros, security pros, or anyone involved in tech planning or everyday use. Demos can be on-site or virtual, and come in a variety of types, so let’s take a look.

Assets only demos: These demos offer downloadable guides that can be followed as a standalone demo, or within a Demo Tenant that is already in your account.

Shared tenant demos: These demos allow you to open a demo environment that’s already pre-configured. This environment may contain products and features that are not available within your own demo tenant.

Tenant only demo: These demos provide an easily accessible personal demo tenant that can be used to demo the product that the experience is about.

Interactive guides: Step-by-step specifics

Interactive guides provide a guided, step-by-step presentation for a specific feature of a product or business scenario. They focus on the enablement of features and functionality, and are especially helpful for supporting virtual training and events.

These guides are often featured at conferences and events, and are available online for all audiences: field, partners, and customers. The experience of participating in an interactive guide is mostly passive, with some guided simulation.

Customer immersion experiences: The full package

Finally, we have the most interactive option, the customer immersion experience (CIE). A CIE is a one-to-three hour on-site or virtual experience led by a professional facilitator that features a high degree of audience participation.

The intended audience for a CIE are enterprise executives, BDMs, or IDTMs that meet minimum qualifications. Generally, the audience for a CIE is anywhere from 4-20 people.

CIEs allow all participants to log into a live Microsoft 365 environment using virtual desktops or a quick tenant. From here, users can interact with one other in real-time, using a scenario-based script to demonstrate various Microsoft 365 products.

There are a number of CIEs to choose from, each highlighting a product or a specific industry. Generally, the experience is interactive, storytelling-based, and hands-on, with some guided simulation. CIEs come in two options: Instant-On or Quick Tenant.

Instant-On: Instant-On CIEs should not be used for testing purposes and only a customer account should be selected.

Quick Tenant: A Quick Tenant CIE provides only a preconfigured tenant, and can be accessed by your users either in a browser or on physical devices. (Devices are not provided by CDX).

So there you have it, the basics of Microsoft CDX explained. Want to learn more about Customer Digital Experiences? If you’re an existing partner, you can access our full M365 Sales Fundamentals workshop here, which features a Transform module. If you’re not yet a partner, but interested in access to our online workshops, masterclasses, your own account manager with Microsoft expertise, and more, become a partner with us today!

The Future of MSP

10 FAQs About Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience, Answered

admin — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 17:01:26 +0000

10 FAQs About Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience, Answered admin Fri, 12/10/2021 - 11:01 Microsoft 365 ��Ƶɫ

Updated 01/10/2022: Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) is now available through Secure Cloud for customers and partners.

What do you need to know about NCE? Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) has been around for Microsoft Azure since 2019, but now it’s expanding to include M365, Dynamics 365, Windows 365, and Power Platform.

While technical previews have been underway since October, the general release date is fast approaching. We wanted to answer any questions that Microsoft partners may have beforehand. Without further ado, here are the most common questions we hear about NCE—and their answers.

1 What is NCE?

As Microsoft puts it, "The new commerce experience makes it easier to transact with Microsoft...It’s a multi-phase, long-term investment in the CSP program aimed at helping our partners accelerate business growth, simplify licensing, and address how their customers prefer to purchase."

Whereas before, NCE only existed for Microsoft Azure, it’s now a Microsoft-wide initiative that introduces a standardized way of doing business, both directly with customers and through partners.

The ultimate goal of introducing NCE is to enable partners and customers to have more choice and buy more easily while optimizing costs. This is evident through the consistent and simplified purchasing experience, the greater standardization of offers and terms, and the opportunity for partners to sell or upsell to a larger set of existing and new customers.

Please note, the initial rollout of NCE for CSP subscriptions will only be for commercial offers. Government, education, and non-profit offers are expected to be introduced to NCE over the coming months, but there is currently no date for when these subscriptions will be available in New Commerce.

2 How will NCE affect partners?

NCE will offer some distinct benefits for partners, allowing them to serve customers better and have an easier time with the platform themselves.

Greater sales agility and customer commitment: NCE offers pricing benefits for annual term subscriptions that lock in pricing for the entire term (plus a promotional pricing period starts in January 2022).

Operational efficiency and cost savings: NCE makes it easier to manage subscriptions, with enhanced provisioning, pausing, automated changes at renewal, and efficiency for quoting and price list management.

More choice for customers: The introduction of the new monthly term subscription will allow customers to cancel or reduce seats more easily than an annual term, at a premium price. It will also be easier to adopt new products and add-ons separately.

3 How will NCE affect customers?

There are also a number of things that make NCE more flexible and accommodating for customers, such as:

New products, with more options: The new Windows 365 is now available for Cloud Service Providers (CSPs). There are also free trial choices with an easier conversion to being a paid customer, as well as new add-ons available only on NCE.

Offers to meet specific or changing needs: For a premium, Microsoft will now offer new monthly-term subscriptions, allowing customers to cancel or reduce seat counts on a monthly basis. Monthly subscriptions can also be combined with annual subscriptions to help customers balance cost.

More value for commitment: Customers can access the best pricing on annual terms with long-term protection. They can also lock in pricing further with multi-year terms, and switch from a monthly to an annual term easily to save money.

4 When are commercial subscriptions moving to NCE?

There are a few dates to keep in mind. Any new subscriptions will have to be made on NCE after March 2022. However, the ability to renew existing subscriptions on the legacy CSP platform will continue through June 30th 2022, ending on July 1st 2022. Legacy subscriptions will remain in effect until each of the subscription terms end, but Microsoft partner incentive rebates on legacy subscriptions will be removed in October 2022. After June, legacy customers will have to renew subscriptions in the New Commerce Experience before each subscription expires to ensure the services continue.

5 Can I have one customer on the same SKU with multiple terms?

Yes, you can have a customer on different terms, with different sets of seats, for the same offer. In the SMB space, it’s more common to have seasonal or temporary employees over the course of the year, for example in the restaurant and tourism industries. For these customers, mixing Annual and Monthly agreements for permanent and temporary users can be the most cost effective option.

"For example, a growing organization can minimize license fees and lock in predictable pricing for new users with an annual or multi-year subscription. However, that same organization can further minimize costs and maximize flexibility by including monthly subscriptions for any licenses that are expected to be unused for more than 3 months each year. As a partner, you can elect to have monthly, annual, or multi-year term expiration, which gives you maximum flexibility where term length is concerned.

6 How can I start an NCE subscription?

��Ƶɫ will continue to use the Secure Cloud - Partner Portal to start subscriptions.

7 How do I cancel, and will I receive a refund?

With NCE, a cancellation policy will be enforced for all terms. A subscription can only be cancelled or downgraded within 72 hours of the initial order or renewal, for all term types. A prorated refund will be provided for cancellations, with proration calculated daily within that 72-hour span. After 72 hours, that cancellation function will not be available. Suspending an account can prevent users from accessing the subscription, but billing for that subscription will continue.

8 Can I reduce seats during an existing contract?

Like cancellations, seat counts on a new commerce subscription can be reduced within the first 72 hours. However, if there’s a midterm order of additional seats, you will also have a 72-hour window to reduce that back to the original number of seats.

Conversely, if customers want to add seats, they will be priced at the original subscription purchase price (not the current price). Overall, this means that the price for additional seats will always be locked in at the beginning of the term.

9 Will there be promos? When?

Microsoft has announced a promotional period for NCE commercial offers that begins January 10, 2022 and runs through June 30, 2022. During this time, customers can choose a monthly subscription without paying the 20% premium, aligning monthly term pricing with annual term pricing. From January 10, 2022 to March 31, 2022, customers can choose an annual subscription and lock in a 5% discount off the annual term pricing. Microsoft has indicated they may extend this 5% promotion, possibly all the way through June 30, 2022.

10 Will there be any new features?

Yes! Microsoft is introducing a number of new features to help partners with how they manage subscriptions, billing, and data processing. Here are a few:

The ability to schedule changes at subscription renewal: ��Ƶɫ will be able to schedule different seat counts, SKU conversions, term-length renewal changes, and renewals to different billing options. This allows partners to manage subscriptions in advance instead of performing manual changes at renewal, which improves operational efficiency.

Automatic seat assignment with full upgrade: Whereas before, this was only possible with SMB SKUs, now seats can also be assigned automatically at upgrade with enterprise-level SKUs. This creates easier and more efficient subscription management for larger customers, saving partners a lot of work.

Auto-renewal toggle option: Now, partners can toggle auto-renewal and submit it manually. This makes it easier to manage renewals and plan ahead for subscriptions that will be terminating soon.

Switching partners:.Customers will not be able to transfer active subscriptions to a new partner. New subscriptions and additional users may be added via a new partner, but customers will continue to be responsible for existing subscription terms.

Subscription ownership enforcement: Previously, customers could buy from different partners to aggregate instances of the same SMB offer and buy multiple free trials. Now, Customer SKU limits will be enforced across multiple partner tenants, preventing a customer from purchasing multiple lower-cost SMB SKUs beyond defined limits from different partners. This prevents customers from gaming the system, and ensures that partners can maximize revenue from each customer.

Suspend/resume subscriptions: Previously, a partner would have to suspend and then reorder subscriptions if the term expired. Now, a partner can suspend and then resume a subscription at any time during the term without cancellation. Partner billing will continue through the suspension. This helps the partner by allowing them to pause until the customer remits an overdue payment.

Note on M365 price change

In addition to launching the New Commerce Experience for CSP’s, Microsoft also announced commercial pricing changes for some key Microsoft 365 SKU’s around the same time. Although these price changes are unrelated to NCE, it’s good to be aware of how they could impact you and your customers. This pricing increase reflects the value of the solutions and the added areas of innovation around communication and collaboration, security and automation. The pricing changes will go into effect on March 1, 2022. You can read more about that here for a clear and graphical breakdown of these changes.

Hopefully, we’ve answered any questions you had around NCE. If you’d like to know more, contact your ��Ƶɫ or AppRiver channel account manager directly, or become a partner with us – we will be your guide.

The Future of MSP

Security Best Practices for MSPs

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 18:00:00 +0000

Security Best Practices for MSPs admin Wed, 12/01/2021 - 12:00 Thought Leadership ��Ƶɫ

While security has always been a key offering for MSPs, it’s more important now than ever. In the last year alone, phishing and social engineering scams have gone up by an astounding 400%. What’s more, two recent massive breaches—Solarwinds and Kaseya—show that MSPs are at an elevated risk.

As IT business growth expert Richard Tubb explained to CloudAlly, cybercriminals are targeting MSPs because they hold the keys to the whole kingdom. “If you can hack an MSP,” he says, “You can gain access to all their clients.” We talked to him about best practices MSPs can adopt to prioritize security and keep their clients safe in a security landscape that’s getting more complicated by the day.

Table stakes security

According to Tubb, every MSP should be taking two essential actions to strengthen their own security measures:

1) Prioritize basic, essential cyber security

Too often, says Tubb, MSPs will recommend extensive security measures for their clients, only to fall short of taking their own advice. Making sure strong passwords, password managers, and multi-factor authentication are in place are basic measures, but they’re also absolutely essential, and too often overlooked.

2) Investigate cybersecurity insurance

Unfortunately, we live in an age where supply chain attacks are becoming increasingly common. Tubb recommends that every MSP investigate cybersecurity insurance. “We can’t keep everyone safe,” he says. “We can do our best, but attackers will find their way in.”

Accepting this as an inevitability is the first step, and the second is to seek out specialized insurance for this type of attack. “Go to a specialized, local insurance broker and say ‘We need to mitigate our risk through insurance, and we need this insurance for our clients as well,” says Tubb. There are many brokers who know the IT market well, and building a relationship with them now will help you out down the line.

Rethink recovery

The Covid-19 pandemic changed business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) plans as more of the workforce was forced to work remotely. There’s still a need for traditional backup and disaster recovery, but with workers distributed across the world, most solutions are in the cloud. This brings a whole other disaster and recovery problem to the fore.

Some MSPs may assume they’re off the hook for backing up their clients’ cloud-based email, calendar, and business intelligence software—that the vendor will take care of it. However, most major cloud service providers (such as Microsoft and Google) actually recommend a third party backup as part of their service terms. Anyone who’s ever tried to recover or restore third-party, cloud-based data knows that this can take a long time, and the time spent waiting can cause major disruptions to operations.

Tubb argues that MSPs should be asking themselves what they’ve done to mitigate the risk in the event that the cloud-based provider loses the client’s data. Another way to think of this is: if a client wanted to move from one provider to another, how would you help them do the backup and restore to allow them to make that move?

The bottom line is, if your MSP is selling hosted, cloud-based software, you can’t rely on the vendor for backup. You should be offering a backup service as part of your bundled product offering, which will ultimately lower your cost of support and increase your revenue.

MSPs by the numbers: What to track

As Tubb tells it, there are a number of metrics and KPIs MSPs can use to get a read on how well your security measures are serving your clients. These fall into a few small categories.

Customer satisfaction

According to Tubb, customer satisfaction metrics are massively overlooked in the MSP industry. This is despite it being a great tool for direct customer feedback on what you’re doing well and what you could improve. There are two ways to gauge customer satisfaction overall.

The first opportunity is to directly solicit feedback on an interaction-by-interaction basis. As Tubb says, “You should have an option to send a request for feedback automatically with every ticket you close.” While the response rate for this kind of request is historically very low—about 1%—there are tools that make it easier for clients to give feedback that yield a response rate between 40 and 50%. This is a great way to collect feedback, because it gives you the opportunity to jump on a phone call with the client directly if you receive a bad score and see if there’s anything you can do better.

The second opportunity for client feedback is broader, but no less important: net promoter score, or NPS. This metric measures the overall loyalty that your customers feel toward your company, and it’s calculated by asking each customer, at regular intervals, “On a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend us to someone else?” As Tubb explains, on an individual basis, anything less than a 9 should make you nervous, and anything below a 7 puts that client in “detractor” territory. NPS is important to track because it allows you to follow up with clients who give you bad scores to see how you could improve their experience, but it also allows you more generally to keep your finger on the pulse of how loyal your clients feel overall.

Keeping track of KPIs

Which KPIs an MSP should be tracking varies from business to business. Tubb recommends building a set of KPIs by asking yourself what’s important to your business.

For example, some MSPs might want to know their technician to node ratio (that is, how many clients a technician is looking after, where 250-400 is usually a healthy number). Others still might want to keep track of their ticket volume per day, per technician (here, 10-20 tickets per day is considered manageable).

Of course, there are financial KPIs you can track as well that will measure the health of your business. Gross margin will tell you how much revenue your MSP is generating after the cost of doing business, and calculating your percentage of recurring revenue will tell you how much of your revenue is reliably being repeated each month (typically, best in class for this metric is about 70%).

The security world is changing all the time, but introducing consistency around your MSP’s own security, recovery efforts, and KPI tracking can go a long way in ensuring continued success and continuing to serve your clients well.

The Future of MSP

Why Your MSP Needs to Add a Backup Service (and How to Choose a Vendor)

admin — Thu, 18 Nov 2021 01:51:41 +0000

Why Your MSP Needs to Add a Backup Service (and How to Choose a Vendor) admin Wed, 11/17/2021 - 19:51 Backup ��Ƶɫ

When workplaces went virtual in 2019, more companies than ever moved to cloud-based SaaS platforms like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. While many are well-versed in the benefits of these platforms—they enable collaboration, scalability, and the ability to work truly remotely—their pitfalls are less well-known.

Ongoing threats like phishing scams, human error, sync issues, and malicious intent make SaaS data susceptible to data loss. With more business-critical data living in the cloud than ever, this is not a breach any company can afford to endure.

But with every risk comes an opportunity, and for MSPs, the opportunity here is a big one. Adding backup services to your offerings will protect your customer’s data, add to your monthly recurring revenue (MRR), and position you as an industry leader in terms of your offerings. Let’s take a closer look at why offering a backup service is a great idea.

Reason 1: SaaS data loss happens

The numbers don’t lie: according to Security Magazine, 80% of companies have experienced a cloud data breach. All it takes is a click on a phishing email or someone deleting the wrong files to become a part of that statistic, and while in-app recovery of deleted data is often possible, it can take weeks or even months to retrieve. In short, if there’s sensitive data, it’s necessary to back it up.

Reason 2: Compliance laws require it

Regulatory laws like GDPR, HIPAA, FINRA, CCPA, and Sox all state that data protection is a “shared responsibility”. This means that cloud service customers are expected to restore their own personal data in the event of a security breach.

If your customers fail to back up their data, they’ll face fines, not to mention a hit to their reputation. What’s more, native options like Recycle Bin, Trash, Litigation Hold, and Vault are archival and e-discovery tools only that do not automate backup or easy data recovery.

This is why Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce all advise their customers to use a third-party backup solution (read the fine print, it’s in there).

Reason 3: Backups minimize the impact and cost of data breaches

Recovery point objective (RPO, or the maximum amount of data you can tolerate losing in a disaster) and recovery time objective (RTO, or the amount of time it would take to get back to regular operations after a data loss) are the two benchmarks of disaster recovery every cloud user should be aware of. Improving your customers’ ability to recover data also improves their ability to bounce back from disaster.

Secure backup and point-in-time recovery minimize your customer’s RPO and RTO, ensuring faster disaster recovery. Having the right backups in place can also greatly reduce the cost of downtime and avoid disruption by ensuring a shorter path to business continuity in the event of a breach.

Reason 4: You’ll have a competitive edge

As an MSP provider, your job is to protect your customers’ data. Even so, you’d be surprised by the number of MSPs that don’t yet offer backup services.

Services like disaster recovery, data backup and restore, and business continuity, allow you to fulfill your promise of data security while setting yourself apart as an industry leader.

Reason 5: You’ll increase your MRR

Finally, adding SaaS backup to your portfolio of MSP services will make you more profitable. Opting in to cloud backup has become a top business priority for your customers. As industry analyst Forrester puts it, “Back up SaaS data or risk losing customers, partners, and employees.” In other words, your customers are ready for the service, and you’d be missing out on revenue if you weren’t the one offering it.

How to choose a cloud backup partner

Now that you know why you should be offering backup services to your customers, let’s talk about what’s important when it comes to choosing a vendor. There are 10 factors you’ll want to pay attention to in your quest for the right partner.

Factor #1: ROI

Of course, the first thing you’ll want to know when seeking out a vendor is whether it will be worth it financially. When considering the return on investment (ROI), you should look at two aspects:

ROI from reduced RPO and RTO

RPO is the maximum amount of time that can elapse between two data backups. You should ask about how often backups occur, if you can customize it, and if you can backup on-demand. Ask about backup data storage limits and data retention as well, to make sure you can recover data from any point in time.

RTO, on the other hand, is the amount of time it takes to restore regular operations after data loss. You should ask about recovery time and recovery flexibility.

ROI based on feature requirements

Based on who your clients are and which industries they’re operating in, you’ll have your own set of features that you want to fulfill. List out your specific requirements and make sure they’ll be met by your cloud backup vendor to get the most out of your investment.

Factor #2: Monthly recurring revenue (MRR)

As an MSP provider, you already know that to maximize MRR, it makes sense to sell ongoing services as opposed to one-off products. Your backup partner should offer SaaS backup and recovery with both monthly and annual plans, and those plans should be flexible and scalable to accommodate any changing customer needs. Overall, your vendor should be as committed to you achieving your MRR goals as you are.

Factor #3: Ease of use

The ideal backup and recovery solution will let you hit the ground running and be relatively easy to maintain. It should be possible to choose a solution that requires zero installation and minimal support. Getting an in-depth demo and trial of the solution can help you confirm that it’s intuitive to use, and that it restores data as promised.

Factor #4: Flexibility

Most MSPs support a wide range of customers in a number of industry types, so you’ll want to make sure that your cloud backup vendor doesn’t limit you in terms of customer size, backup storage limits, software requirements, backup storage locations, and/or backup storage types.

Explore the range of backup and recovery options available to you. For example, can you backup to your own storage when required and/or export backups to a storage type of your choice? And will your customers be able to recover their data easily at any level, from any point in time?

Factor #5: Multi-platform support

Most workplaces host a number of SaaS platforms. For example, your clients might use Microsoft 365 for Exchange, SharePoint, and Teams, but Dropbox for cloud storage. Multi-platform support for all major SaaS platforms is a must for any MSP with a large portfolio of clients. You’ll also want to examine that essential applications of the SaaS platform are backed up too (for example, Microsoft 365 backup should include Mail, Calendar, Contacts and Tasks, Teams, OneDrive, and SharePoint).

Factor #6: Security and compliance

Your data is only as safe as the backup you’re using. You should thoroughly screen your backup vendor’s security credentials. Are they GDPR compliant? Can they provide a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) to be HIPAA compliant? Is their data encrypted both at-rest and in-transit? Are the backups hosted with a reliable vendor? Do they support OAuth, Okta, MFA/2FA? Is there a choice of local data centers? Do they adhere to no data retention after deletion and privacy by design? These are all important questions, and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask them.

Factor #7: Partner-friendly

Ask each cloud backup vendor about the partner-friendly features and tools it offers. Does the vendor offer a centralized web-based backup management console? Is there a unified place to monitor and manage all your accounts and customer backups? How about a central billing console? These factors make a real difference.

Factor #8: Support

Experiencing data loss is an extremely stressful event for any company. This situation is made all the more stressful when one or more parties is unreachable. Your cloud backup partner should offer support that’s multi-channel, responsive, and available any time.

Factor #9: Reputation

Your customers want an MSP that’s reputable, with a proven track record. The same should be true of the backup partner you choose on their behalf. Look for a proven and tested partner with a great SLA and a top-rated suite of services.

Factor #10: Pricing

Pricing is important—not only the dollar value, but the fine print behind it. You’ll want to look at things like whether storage is included, whether you have to make a commitment based on number of users, and whether your vendor offers monthly and annual pricing.

You may also want to ask about things like high-volume enterprise pricing, goodwill discounts, or deferral of transition costs. Finally, you’ll want to confirm that you don’t have to pay for any upgrade, additional software licenses, plugins, training, or support.

If you’re considering adding a cloud-to-cloud backup solution to your portfolio, visit here to learn more about how ��Ƶɫ can help.

The Future of MSP

Is Verticalization the Right Strategy for MSP Growth?

admin — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 15:28:14 +0000

Is Verticalization the Right Strategy for MSP Growth? admin Wed, 10/13/2021 - 10:28 MSP ��Ƶɫ

Terry Ledger’s first customer was a “really strange one.”

They were a semiconductor brokerage house. Think of it as a stock market for computer parts. If Acme Corp has an excess of one hundred thousand chips and Wayne Enterprises is mothballing production because they need one hundred thousand parts, the brokerage plays matchmaker.

As the founder of Network Coverage, a managed service provider (MSP), it was Ledger’s job to keep the brokerage’s systems running. But he quickly learned that the semiconductor stock market was a world unto itself, packed with intricate processes and complex software.

Perhaps understandably, Ledger didn’t niche down into the world of semiconductors. Instead, he pursued customers in a wide range of industries, securing clients in manufacturing, engineering, biotechnology, among others. During this exploration, he realized he was attracting more and more customers in one vertical: commercial construction.

Year by year, he acquired more construction expertise and developed a stronger reputation among building companies. Eventually, Network Coverage was seen as the MSP for construction businesses in the Greater Boston area. He says this process of verticalization was key to the success of his company.

If you aren’t familiar with the term, verticalization refers to specializing in specific industries, functions, channels, or regions. In the case of MSPs, it almost always means industry verticalization—that’s specializing in banking, healthcare, life science, and so on.

Ledger isn’t alone in his support of the tactic, either.

Business leaders have been promoting verticalization for years. They promise that niched organizations will gain institutional knowledge, accelerate their marketing efforts, and enhance their reputation.

But the reality is less clear-cut. Alongside all the headline benefits are underappreciated risks and overlooked drawbacks.

For a balanced analysis of verticalization for MSPs, read on.

Learn the ropes—once

There’s a lot of operational overlap between modern businesses. Almost all companies will have email. Most have a cloud storage platform. A lot will have some sort of security. But beneath the basic technology lies a layer of industry-specific technology.

Take architectural, engineering, and construction businesses—jointly known as AEC.

Whether you’re supporting an architectural firm, contracting business, or engineering practice, chances are they’ll be using the same CAD, accounting, and proposal software. Once you’ve worked with half a dozen AEC businesses, you’ve worked with them all. That industry expertise is invaluable.

“We know all the AEC applications,” says Ledger. “We can circumvent the vendor and can provide most customers with first level of support. That’s opposed to escalating issues up to the vendor and relying on them getting back to us in a timely fashion.”

Tap into the marketing network effect

Think of your customer’s business as a premium saloon or coupe. When it breaks down, they’re not going to go to a generic dealership to get it fixed. They’re going to look for someone who knows what they’re talking about.

“If someone drives a Ford, they’re probably not going to bring it to the Chevy dealer to get it fixed,” says Ledger. “The Chevy guys know how to fix a Chevy. The Ford guys know how to fix Fords.”

It’s the same story in managed services. Legal firms will want someone who understands their security needs. Manufacturers want someone who gets CAD.

When you’re the go-to provider for a particular industry, that’s a powerful competitive advantage. In smaller or insular markets, the impact is magnified.

For example, most large construction company owners in any region will know each other. They’ll attend the same conferences, see each other at cocktail parties, and recruit from a similar pool of employees. When they start talking about a provider as a specialist or expert in their field, that’s the strongest form of marketing you can ever get.

Repeatability and profitability

Consider two customers. One is a carbon copy of a different long-term customer—same industry, organizational hierarchy, business processes, and so on. The other is unusual—new geography, new sector, strange ways of doing business.

Of the two, which do you think will be more profitable? The first, of course. You’ve probably spent less on marketing and sales to attract them. Your discovery and onboarding will run like a well-oiled machine. You’ll likely predict any issues and anticipate any opportunities.

In short: When you work with similar customers, you can develop repeatable processes. You can work more efficiently, drive down costs, and carve out more profit.

Consider the drawbacks

Verticalization sounds like a silver bullet for MSPs. More expertise, stronger marketing, improved profitability. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, the practical reality isn’t quite so clear. Alongside all the benefits are a handful of serious drawbacks. Before driving a verticalization transformation, it’s important to consider them carefully.

First, verticalized businesses experience amplified negatives.

“In much the same way cocktail parties lead to referrals, they can bite you in the ass,” says Ledger.

Any negative feedback or commentary gets heard by a significant proportion of your target market. Even if the claims are unfounded, untrue, or exaggerated, they still have a harmful effect. Say the power goes out in a city and an executive decides to blame their MSP. It’s not fair, but people will listen to their complaints.

Second, recruitment becomes harder. When you niche down into specific verticals, you’re adding another layer of challenge to talent acquisition. Not only do you have to find a competent tech, but you have to find one who understands the ins and outs of education, energy, or public sector work. If you can’t find the right people, you have to invest in specialized training and education to bring generalist new hires up to speed.

Finally, there’s an opportunity cost. By targeting one specific vertical, you are ignoring others. The markets and opportunities you overlook may be highly profitable and rewarding.

To verticalize or diversify?

Unfortunately, there’s no one answer. Each business has unique strengths, circumstances, and goals. Often, organizations will land somewhere in the middle.

Take Terry Ledger. Although he has an enviable reputation as the MSP provider for commercial construction companies, around 40% of his business comes from other industries.

“We have manufacturing and engineering,” he says. “Some biotech because of where we're based. We’re just north of Boston so biotech is an obvious one for us.”

When considering verticalization for your MSP, evaluate your own circumstances, weigh up the pros and cons, and make a choice that’s right for you and your business.

If you’d like to work with Network Coverage, you can contact them here. And for more insightful perspectives from other expert MSP leaders, check out our Rockstars of MSP series here. In this series, we dive into several managed service partner success stories.

The Future of MSP

Breaking Down Microsoft’s Updates: New Commerce Experience and Price Changes

admin — Fri, 17 Sep 2021 14:45:09 +0000

Breaking Down Microsoft’s Updates: New Commerce Experience and Price Changes admin Fri, 09/17/2021 - 09:45 MSP ��Ƶɫ

Updated 01/10/2022: Microsoft’s New Commerce Experience (NCE) is now available through Secure Cloud for customers and partners.

Microsoft recently unveiled a multi-stage, multi-year investment in the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program to help partners better support their customers’ digital transformation efforts. This New Commerce Experience (NCE) for CSP includes new licensing and monthly subscription options to help companies reduce complexity and achieve better purchasing flexibility. NCE was introduced for Azure in 2019, so many partners are already familiar with what to expect. The new commerce experience brings the CSP program into alignment with other programs, such as the Enterprise Agreement, so that all customers have a consistent purchasing experience and are subject to the same terms and conditions for cloud purchases regardless of the Microsoft sales motion.

As one of Microsoft’s top CSP’s, we participated in the NCE pilot since April of this year, so we’ve had a chance to get ready. And now we’re here to help you get ready for when the new commerce experience goes live in January 2022. The first thing we need you to do is REALLY pay attention to these changes; not going to lie – there are a lot of them.

Those of you in the ��Ƶɫ/AppRiver partner family know we pride ourselves on having your back and being Phenomenal everyday. This is one time that we feel you’ll really want to lean on our partnership as we guide you through the changes and the corresponding effect on your business.

Let’s dive in.

Product subscriptions simplified

��Ƶɫ will have access to a consistent and simplified purchasing experience for Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Power Platform. The new commerce experience will include:

Discounted pricing on annual agreements
Discounted pricing on multiyear agreements
Premium pricing for monthly subscriptions
New cancellation policy: Prorated refund for first 72 hours of term
Changes to policy re: adding and subtracting users

Microsoft will include an additional premium price for monthly subscriptions, so we strongly suggest looking at annual or multiyear agreements for your customers. Microsoft will be offering multi-year term options to lock in subscription pricing for Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365 now, with additional offers coming soon.

Moving to the New Commerce Experience

We are here to make the transition to the new commerce experience seamless and ensure partners are positioned for growth. This new program will run in parallel with the legacy CSP program until March 2022, allowing partners time to transition over to the new commerce experience.

New customers will also have the option to choose between the legacy program and new commerce experience. The new subscription orders, offers, and renewals for seat-based offers in the CSP program will become exclusive to the new commerce experience in March 2022.

Starting January 1, 2022, we will launch incentives and promotions for new commerce transactions in the CSP program for partners. More information on these earning opportunities can be found here:

– A 20% discount on the new M365, D365, and Power Platform monthly-term offers to align monthly term to annual. Basically, you’ll avoid the newly introduced monthly price premium though March 2022 with this promo.

– A 5% discount on M365, D365, and Power Platform new commerce annual term offers.

Microsoft 365 Price Changes

In addition to launching the New Commerce Experience for CSP’s, Microsoft also announced pricing changes for some key SKU’s Microsoft 365. This pricing increase reflects the value of the solutions and the added areas of innovation around communication and collaboration, security and automation.

The pricing changes will go into effect on March 1, 2022 and will impact the following products:

For non-US partners: these increases will apply globally with local market adjustments for certain regions.

There are no changes to pricing for education and consumer products at this time.

Looking ahead with Secure Cloud

To provide a one-stop-shopping experience for our partners, we are working to incorporate this into the Secure Cloud and expect to have it available this Fall. We’ll continue to update our partner community as we learn more, so be on the lookout for additional webinars and blogs.

Current partners can view and register for one of the upcoming training sessions we have available in our Partner Resource Center.

We look forward to sharing how the new commerce experience will allow you greater flexibility and growth opportunity.

What should you do now?

Schedule an NCE consultation with your CAM.

Attend our upcoming New Commerce Experience session on 9/29/21 at 10CTL.

The Future of MSP

Making the Leap from Consultancy to MSP

admin — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 18:06:09 +0000

Making the Leap from Consultancy to MSP admin Thu, 08/05/2021 - 13:06 MSP Carrie Simpson, CEO of Managed Sales Pros

In the world of IT service providers, there are two business models to choose from: the break-fix, charge-by-the-hour IT consultancy, and the per-seat managed service provider (MSP).

Many consultancies see the MSP model as a natural next step as they move from a small team to a more mature company. It’s true that the MSP model is more profitable in many cases, but for consultancies looking to take the leap, where do they get started? And how do they know if it’s even the right move?

The reality is that the MSP model is completely different from that of a consultancy, and there are a number of considerations you’ll have to mull over before you can be sure your business is ready.

Don’t believe me? Try this: go to a Reddit forum for MSPs and look for the simple, Day One questions people are asking about running an MSP. You’ll see a lot of posts from people trying to start their own MSP who are completely stumbling through the transition. They had the enthusiasm to succeed, but they didn’t do enough planning and preparation to actually hit the ground running.

The good news is, you can learn from their mistakes.

The main things you’ll need to transition to an MSP are a tolerance for uncertainty and a structured plan for how you’ll grow. That said, there are also a number of concrete steps you can take to get your business to where it needs to be to flourish as an MSP.

Step one: Do the numbers

For many consultancies, moving to an MSP model feels inevitable. It’s just what you do when you reach a certain size, with a certain number of clients. But just because you could do something doesn’t mean you necessarily should. There’s no reason to move to an MSP model if it’s not going to be profitable for your business.

You owe it to yourself to do a deep dive into financial analysis well before you make the call to change your entire offering. There are a number of drastic differences between consultancies and MSPs: consultancies tend to run on a break-fix, hourly rate model, while MSPs typically charge a fixed monthly rate per seat.

It’s your job to figure out ahead of time how that monthly price will break down: what’s included, and what’s your margin on top of that? You can’t just pull a number out of thin air.

I recommend creating a matrix of all your current clients, with a breakdown of what they buy, how often they need support, and whether they’re a profitable client for you or not. You don’t have to do this from scratch, either. There are services like MSP CFO that will help you determine profitability per client by showing you the margin on each of them.

Keep in mind that best-in-class margins (or EBITDA) in the MSP world are around 18%. Operationally mature companies usually have an EBITDA of between 20 and 25%. MSPs that are failing have an EBITDA of less than 10%.

Take the time to project your EBITDA for each client under your proposed business model. If it makes sense to move to an MSP, do it. If it doesn’t, stay where you are.

Step two: Outline your offering

Next, you’ll need to solidify your offering as an MSP. As we know, most MSPs charge their clients a monthly rate for their services. Now you need to figure out what will be included in that price.

Here’s where you work out the basics. For example, are you bundling security into your product offering? If so, is your business competent enough to do that well? Which vendors are you going to work with? Do you have the resources to offer top-tier services, like IT roadmapping?

Many consultancies are used to selling boxes and hours. Pivoting to the more nebulous offering of high-level business concepts can be difficult, and it can be tricky to know how to communicate that value. It’s like selling insurance; it’s something ephemeral that you can’t look at or touch. With MSPs, what you’re really selling is the value of not needing to go through 18 steps in order to get tech support.

Most MSPs take a tiered approach to their service offering, which is something you might want to consider. A three-tiered offering will look something like this:

Tier one: Bare bones

This tier contains the “basics” for price-conscious clients who don’t need much. In other words, all the IT essentials that every business needs (basic hardware, and software like email).

Tier two: Best practices

This tier typically includes all the necessary licensing that a business needs, but doesn’t include the full suite of support that makes it a fully managed service.

Tier three: Expert support

This tier contains everything: licensing, security, and roadmapping for the years ahead. It’s the tier for businesses who don’t want to have to worry about their IT, and who see it as an investment that will enable their growth as a company.

Step three: Step up your staffing

Part of the challenge of offering managed services is being able to balance your workload with your overhead. If you have too many technicians, your profit margins drop. Not enough technicians, and your service quality dips. There’s a constant seesaw of new business to new staff that you have to be mindful of all the time.

At the end of the day, it comes down to being realistic about your planning. If you bring on a 50-seat client, you’d better have the resources to support the amount of work that will bring.

I talk to so many MSPs who hire their first sales representative in June with the intent of tripling their business by next year. Let’s think about what that means. Most MSP sales cycles mean that very few contracts will be signed until the end of the year. These businesses hired someone and gave them a target, but that target was completely unreasonable. Now they’re going to have a sales rep who’s disgruntled and burnt out before the business has brought on even one new client.

It’s natural to be aggressive with your growth goals, but you have to be realistic about what you can actually support.

Step four: Understand your roadblocks

Once you’ve set up and staffed your business to scale, your next hurdle will be doing the actual work of growing your company.

Of the roughly 50,000 MSPs operating today, only 6,000 of them make over $2 million a year in revenue. This figure seems to be the tipping point; if you can make it happen, you can do pretty much anything.

Of the MSPs I’ve worked with, growing a business from $1 million to $2 million in annual revenue seems to be the most difficult leap to make. Most will peter out at the $500,000 mark. Those that do make their way to $1 million in revenue will find that this is where the rubber meets the road. Businesses have to be focused, organized, structured, and process-driven to grow past this point.

One of the major hurdles that impedes this growth is the staffing issue I just mentioned. If you fail to balance client attrition and onboarding with staffing, much of your business will be stuck managing churn. It’s important to continue to monitor where your business is at, whether you’re staffed to grow sustainably, and whether the clients you’re onboarding are ones that you can support with quality service well into the future.

Remember, you have a network to rely on

There are a number of things you’ll need to plan for before you make the transition to building an MSP, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need to figure this out alone. There are tens of thousands of MSPs operating today, and many of them are doing best-in-class work that you can learn a lot from.

Look at the companies you respect in your market, and reach out to them for advice. Most of your peers in the IT space will be happy to share knowledge with you and pass along their best practices. To help you get started, read and subscribe to “Rockstars of MSP”! It spotlights stories from MSP leaders who talk about how they built their businesses.

With proper planning, packaging, and staffing, as well as a realistic set of expectations, you can make the leap from consultancy to MSP.

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Editor's note: if you ever run into trouble, let us know. We offer a lot of great external resources to direct you to, like Carrie (the author of this blog post and CEO of Managed Sales Pros). She has built an entire business around helping MSP founders who have bitten off more than they can chew!

Also recommended for you:

Rockstars of MSP

The Land and Expand Playbook: MSP Pipeline Growth Starts With Saying Yes

The Future of MSP

Fix your sales-service handoff to enhance the customer experience

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2021 17:25:45 +0000

Fix your sales-service handoff to enhance the customer experience admin Fri, 06/25/2021 - 12:25 MSP Carrie Simpson, CEO of Managed Sales Pros

There’s no doubt about it: we’ve reached the age of automation, and today’s MSPs are using it to streamline their services in a number of ways. Whether it’s using email templates and workflow automation in CRM (customer relationship management) systems to eliminate hours of repetitive work from the sales process, or pushing customers to self-service portals for logging tickets, automation can allow you to eliminate the repetitive and redundant parts of a job, which in turn can improve employee satisfaction and increase productivity.

Automation can also help you find cost savings in a number of areas of your business. Find enough efficiencies, and you might be able to lower your headcount or retrain your employees for new roles.

Given these advantages, it can be tempting to automate everything. If one automated process is good, two will be better, right?

Not always.

Here’s the thing: automation misfires. Systems break. Employees make mistakes. Software gets buggy.

Automation will never be able to override human error. If your process now allows you to do more things faster, it stands to reason that a mistake will impact your business on a much larger scale. The thing that you praised when it allowed you to contact 500 prospects in two minutes? You will be cursing it when all 500 of those prospects receive the wrong email. Let’s take a look at the pluses—and pitfalls—of using automation to streamline your sales to service handoff.

Where automation works

Look, I am by no means saying that automation is a bad thing. Automating certain tasks can really, truly make a difference in your day-to-day life. When people ask me what should be automated, the answer is easy: any task that makes people bored and/or complacent.

Many MSPs use an automated quoting tool that integrates with their Professional Services Automation (PSA) platform. Automated quoting is great, because it really does allow your salespeople to get out of the drudgery of clicking over and over, and streamlines something laborious that may not always be worth the amount of work it demands (a prospect is not yet a client, after all).

Likewise, setting up a sales nurture email campaign can be a great way to warm up colder prospects and coax them back into the sales funnel. If a prospect is too early on in their buying journey, or if they’re still working out what exactly they need in order to solve their problems, keeping them in the loop with an automated email cadence isn’t a bad idea.

… and where it doesn’t

There are some major caveats to the examples listed above, however. Let’s look at the example of using quoting software first. Let’s say you use quoting software to fire off a quote to a prospect, and that prospect wants to go ahead and sign a contract. The contract gets sent off and e-signed, and the prospect signs on for an onboarding date. You got a new client and no one had to lift a finger, right?

But now let’s say five other prospects just went through the same process, and they’ve all been promised the same onboarding date. Here’s where reality ruins everything. When the entire process from quoting to signing on are automated, there are no checks and balances in place.

There needs to be a place between service and sales where a human can come in and flag something. If there’s no capacity to onboard a client within the timeframe that was promised, that needs to be caught before the papers are signed. If not, you’re off to a not-great start with a new client when you have to go back on your word right away.

Now, let’s look at the example of using an automated sales nurture email flow. As I mentioned, they’re a great tool to use on colder prospects. And that’s it. Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes: if you just had a great call with a sales rep for an hour, and then an hour later you get an automated email from them, it feels impersonal and doesn’t fit the experience you just had. Automation should be overridden for warm prospects. You owe it to them to give them your full, human attention.

The lesson? Automation works well for many parts of your sales process, but it’s never a blanket solution. There are many points where you can easily differentiate yourself from your competitors by putting on your “white gloves” to treat the prospect with care.

Be aware of your limits

The trick is to find where the limits of automation exist within your business. The larger your company is, the more you can benefit from automation, but also, the more likely you are to experience automation gone awry.

Taking stock of your sales process and flagging all the parts where automation needs to end and a human needs to step in is important. A good rule of thumb is to look for the points in the sales process at which things stop being straightforward. This is often the point at which work is scoped and promises are made.

No client or prospect wants to feel like the work you’re doing with them is mundane, repetitive, or redundant, so you need to be aware of when things could start to tip this way. I’ll never forget one MSP that sent me a proposal with the name of my biggest competitor in all the places where my business’ name should have been. How is a prospect supposed to feel confident that an MSP can provide a unique or special service if they fail to catch something like that?

Quality control is key

One big lesson that seems to be difficult for some MSPs to learn is that automation is never a “set it and forget it” scenario. One MSP I know of changed over to a new PSA system to manage their ticketing process, but failed to realize for three months that the ticketing process wasn’t firing effectively. They lost three clients in a month because of it. This is more of a quality control issue than an automation one. Who was there checking the system to make sure it actually worked?

Let’s use an analogy that’s well-known in the IT world. People buy backup and disaster recovery products that are supposed to automatically check your backups every night. These things often misfire, though, so they’re often checked to make sure things were backed up correctly. The stakes are high, and no MSP wants to be held responsible for losing a client’s data simply because they forgot to check if something was firing properly.

You should approach your automation quality control the same way. You would never not check your backups, so why not apply the same vigilance to your sales and marketing software? Make sure you’re looking at each stage of the process to see where the bugs are, and check in frequently to make sure everything is still working as planned.

A final thought

There’s no doubt that automation can help you get out of the weeds and focus on the parts of your business that need attention. At the end of the day, how much you automate is up to you.

It can help to put on your “customer” hat. As a customer, automation is great when it makes sense. Who doesn’t love using the self-checkout line at their local grocery store? But if you walked into Tiffany’s and they had a self-checkout line, you’d be confused.

If you want your prospects and customers to feel valued, think about where that value shows up in the sales and onboarding process. Then, make a vow to yourself to never automate that part of the process. You owe it to your customers—and your business—to show up where it counts.

Also recommended for you

How to Harness Your Employees to Collect Valuable Customer Data

The Land and Expand Playbook: MSP Pipeline Growth Starts With Saying Yes

6 Red Flags from Your Next Potential Vendor Relationship

The Future of MSP

How to Harness Your Employees to Collect Valuable Customer Data

admin — Thu, 27 May 2021 17:00:34 +0000

How to Harness Your Employees to Collect Valuable Customer Data admin Thu, 05/27/2021 - 12:00 MSP Carrie Simpson, CEO of Managed Sales Pros

Imagine one of your customers is nearing the end of their contract. You check your PSA and decide they’re a good fit for an upsell—decent turnover, growing headcount, stable industry.

Three months out from their renewal date, you call them up and give them your best sales pitch.

And then it all falls apart.

It turns out your customer has been complaining about dropped tickets and slow service for months. They don’t want to talk about a new contract until you’ve fixed all their current problems.

You hang up the phone and click back to your PSA. What just happened? There’s nothing there to even suggest there was a problem with this account to begin with.

The likely cause is that your employees aren’t documenting their work properly. If I’m being honest, I don’t even blame them. PSAs are clunky and everyone develops quick workarounds and shortcuts to speed up their work, especially when business owners haven’t implemented Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

But as we’ve just seen, poor documentation wreaks havoc on subsequent resells. Let’s talk about fixing MSP data practices and harnessing your employees to collect valuable customer data.

The problem with data

Before we dive into fixes, let’s hammer out the two distinct challenges MSPs face with customer data: data access and data reliability.

First, data access.

In most cases, day-to-day customer data lives in a PSA like Connectwise, Autotask, and ServiceNow. That’s where you see things like contract details, documentation, projects, and calendars. It’s also where techs’ notes should live. When a tech fixes a ticket or goes on-site, they should document what they did.

While PSAs are great for customer data, they’re woeful for sales. Even so, account managers have to use them because that’s where the customer data is.

In order to sell more effectively, MSPs need to manage data in a way that allows visibility across both PSA and tools that are designed for sales like CRMs. You can integrate the two tools, but it’s often expensive unless there’s a one-click integration. The alternative is to work between the two systems. It’s not ideal, but it’s immediately accessible.

But behind the data access challenge is a more fundamental problem: data reliability. This comes from employees not properly documenting their work. When your data is unreliable, it’s unusable. Say your PSA doesn’t have any ticket notes. Does that mean everything is going well, or that your techs didn’t remember to document their work? You don’t know.

It’s this second problem we’re going to focus on. Because unless your data is reliable, it doesn’t matter whether or not it’s accessible.

Set behavior benchmarks

The goal here is simple: techs should take proper notes when they go on-site. While simple in theory, it’s a problem that all MSPs have to deal with. Techs are busy. They prioritize metrics like time to resolution or average ticket completion time. If they’re rushing from one ticket to the next, proper documentation is one of the first things they’ll cut.

The reason they prioritize speed is that they’re (usually) appraised on speed. If you set an SLA for ticket acknowledgment at 30 minutes, resolution plan at two hours, and resolution at eight hours, they’ll move to hit those targets. Since ticket resolution isn’t contingent on record-keeping, it makes sense to skip over their notes.

Once you know what behavior you want to encourage—record-keeping—you have to work it into your incentivization structure. Companies have adopted strategic platforms like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) to benchmark the behavior they want and incentivize against it.

Drive consistency

As with all change management, the moment an owner takes their hand off the wheel, progress and standards slip. This is no different. Once you have your revised incentive plan in place, you need to stick to it, come hell or high water.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a superstar tech who consistently closes tickets in one call, you likely will give them a lot of slack—outcome is important. Process is also important, so what do you do when they’re skipping or putting off completing their documentation? It’s tempting to let it slide. After all, they’re your superstar.

When you let their behavior slip, the people around them think, “Oh, it's okay not to take notes.” Then their behavior begins slipping, too. They’re now also skipping taking notes and closing tickets without proper documentation, and they feel justified in doing so. It slowly ripples through your business, and it begins to undo all of the processes you’ve spent years building.

As you see the change unwinding, you might come down hard on your B- and C-players. Ultimately, this just builds resentment across your entire team. Why is the superstar getting away with the things they’re being disciplined for?

Now, you’re back to solving the same problems you experienced early on in your managed services business—and you’re going to have to start over. Retraining people is challenging when they know they can let standards slip. Disciplinary action is not advised when you’ve enforced an uneven or unfair policy. A consistent policy—documented, trained, and acknowledged in writing by your team—is mandatory if you want to provide corrective counselling or build a performance improvement plan.

Identify the behaviors you want to promote. Find a way to incentivize them. Then drive unrelenting consistency.

Find the problem and work backward

Creating reliable data might seem like a thankless task—but it can drive improved sales performance. To understand why, start at the problem and work backward.

Your MSP business isn’t growing? Ask why: you’re not bringing in more revenue.

Why isn’t your revenue growing? You’re not adding enough new opportunities. Dig deeper for an answer: one reason might be you don’t know what’s going on with your current customers.

Why don’t you know what’s going on with your current customers? Your employees aren’t keeping accurate records.

When you’re in the weeds, it’s tough to see the link between accurate record-keeping and increased revenue—but it’s there.

When all of your employees document their work in a standardized format and single platform, you gain a much deeper understanding of both your prospects and your customers. You’ll know what you should offer for upsells and when to push for renewals. You can increase your sales performance without adding sales headcount. With clear visibility into the entire lifecycle of your customers, and clearly defined standard operating procedures enforced consistently across your organization, it won’t be long until your business begins experiencing the best-in-class margins and year over year growth you desire.

The Future of MSP