Small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are rapidly discovering managed service providers (MSPs) as valuable outsourced IT experts. MSPs have developed a broad range of expertise in IT business processes and applying technology to solving business problems for the SMBs. MSPs have multiple clients, and your business can benefit from their experiences across many similar businesses. According to MSPAlliance, approximately 60 percent of more than 10,000 MSPs focus on the health care vertical, 50 percent focus on financial services, and 40 percent focus on the legal vertical. If your business is in or adjacent to one of these verticals, you could benefit from these vendors’ experience and increase your productivity. These MSPs build and deliver complete business-focused solutions that take away your concerns about trying to keep up in a fast-paced world.
The channel has been changing for several years. Resellers are moving away from traditional hardware- and software-based margins with a service component selling to SMBs. As hardware has become less important, technology has become more “consumerized,” and the cloud has become more important in business applications. In response to this trend, many traditional resellers have changed their business model to that of an MSP, which is a service-led model based on recurring revenues and constant client interaction. This model is difficult initially for resellers used to selling the solution up front because it means shifting to a new business model and recognizing revenues on a monthly subscription basis. Once this model starts flowing for the reseller, however, it works well for both the buyer and the seller. Revenue is consistent for the reseller, and service levels and support are consistent for the SMB.
In recent years, specialized MSPs have appeared that focus expertise in specific verticals. These MSPs typically build expertise and solutions for security, networking, and applications. MSPs have become excellent resources that provide software integrations as well as business process integration of applications to improve and optimize the SMB operations. MSPs that have expertise in your market have developed best practices that will benefit your SMB.
SMBs have come to love MSP for seven primary reasons:
If you’re an SMB looking for a leading MSP, consider asking your friends and fellow business owners if they know a reliable, trusted MSP that genuinely wants to help your business, not just keep IT operational. Mark Essayian, president and CEO of KME Systems—a leading MSP in Lake Forest, California—has coined the term technical janitors and states, “KME is not a technical janitor that just cleans windows and updates PCs; we are instead a business process firm specializing in IT services.”
If you don’t have the resources or technical talent in your organization, consider finding a highly regarded and recommended MSP to become your outsourced IT business partner. The MSP will help build a secure, high-performance environment using the appropriate technology solutions and maintain and manage the entire implementation.
MSPs have become an important channel to market for vendors and cloud providers, and this brings trusted advisors to SMBs. The best MSPs deliver “business outcomes” to the SMB rather than simple technology-based point solutions.
If you have experience with MSPs, please share your thoughts with our readers.
