How to Develop a Managed Services Strategy
If you’re running a managed service provider, you know how stressful it can be. As the demand for MSPs continues to flourish, it is important to be prepared to handle the overflow of customers.
You should still be able to provide newer technologies, deliver better uptime, and free up time of on-site staff so they can concentrate on other strategic projects.
With the significant challenges faced by businesses of all shapes and sizes, it can be overwhelming. The question now is how do you build a robust managed services strategy?
Read on to find out.
1. Record Your Strategy
Creating a good PowerPoint presentation and Excel spreadsheet containing projections on revenue and cost isn’t enough when developing a managed services strategy.
Create documentation that focuses on your efforts and record your activities. Write down all the aspects of MSP businesses, including offers, sales, marketing, delivery, finance, client management, etc.
In addition to this, you should cover measurable and auditable targets for each of the aforementioned areas. Make quarterly objectives and have it reviewed by the leadership team regularly.
2. Determine the Structure of the Organization
It looks easy to outline the structure of an organization. But executing it and investing on the right skills and resources can be difficult. The organizational functions in managed services are similar with those in other businesses. However, the skills and intelligence needed for these functions in MSPs are different.
3. Define the Offer
The offer serves as the groundwork of a managed services business. Failure to do it correctly may cause slow, painful growth, or maybe not grow at all. The offer should be market-centric, and often call for the tech company to take a risk.
The offer should be focused on mitigating the pain that the customer is experiencing as a result of their technology. This could be in the form of financial pain, operational pain, or something else.
4. Fine-tune Pricing Model
When determining pricing, start with your breakeven point and delivery costs. After that, compare the costs of an in-house staff to those of your managed IT services. Explain to prospective customers how you computed your pricing model in a way that they will understand.
Once you have completed the steps, set the price of your core offerings. You can get your solution to market faster if you know what the regular and extra costs are. All of this will enable you to select vendors for successful pricing, thereby shortening your sales cycle. Selling becomes easier and more repeatable, allowing you to scale your operations more quickly.
5. Specialization of Sales
Marketing managed services is nothing like selling technology. Since the offer zeroes in on outcomes, the sales resource must have a full grasp of the technology being managed and the operations needed to handle tech at an optimal level. Moreover, they need to understand the customer’s financial operations.
These transactions are more complex and require more time to quote and close the deal. Usually, the decision is made at the highest administrative level of a major line of business, rather than the IT organization, though they do have some sway.
6. Service Delivery
Keep in mind about your customer’s operations when delivering services. The delivery model must guarantee that the intended outcome of the offer is achieved. As an MSP, you need to be proactive, predictive, and preventive.
The importance of standardization, scalability, and automation cannot be overstated. Delivery has a greater impact on profitability and customer satisfaction than any other function in managed services.
7. Client Satisfaction
Providing outstanding technical support can help you become a successful MSP. While most incidents can be fixed by on-site visits, some of them can be provided remotely. Using remote monitoring and management software can increase efficiencies, address security incidents right away, and increase your revenue.
8. Financial Operations
Managing your finances can be tricky. You must have a person on board that understands the financial aspect of your business.
The financial operation of MSPs is different as compared to product business. It requires unique revenue forecasting, margin calculation, ongoing resource, and operations investments.
Without careful consideration of this aspect, your managed services can fall apart.
Final Thoughts
By considering these tips, you can develop a robust managed services strategy. It can also make you more competitive in your industry while saving you from disasters.
If you want to be a leader in delivering managed services, ITarian can provide the right tools to manage multiple endpoints, respond to threats, and do other related IT tasks. Contact us now to know more.