As a managed services provider (MSP), it’s your job to help your clients in any way you can. They look to you to meet all of their technology-related needs. Whether you’re helping them with mobile solutions, cybersecurity services, unified communication services, IoT, or more, they need you to be their IT superhero. Unfortunately, meeting all of their needs WHILE ALSO providing white-glove service, is a tremendous challenge. That challenge is made much harder if you’re a lean organization with limited resources, that’s also got its sights on growing the business. Problems around ‘scaling the business’ for growth are often simple to spot after the fact. However, staying proactive and ahead of these challenges is all about knowing the signs. Let’s review some of the most prominent roadblocks MSPs should look out for when scaling up their business for growth.
Spending too much too fast
While it may be one of the most apparent ‘red flags’ out there for any business, spending too much too fast can be a major problem for MSPs on the grow. To avoid overspending organizations need first to set a budget and come up with a specific plan for where they’re going to invest. Taking time for preplanning is particularly critical when looking at adding new staff members. Labor costs represent a significant burden on businesses’, and MSPs often underestimate the real cost of hiring talent. It takes a significant amount of time and money to find, hire, train and keep high-caliber talent. Costs are even higher for bringing on technical experts you may need to manage your Network Operations Center (NOC) or to deliver customer support, for instance. Adding to this challenge is the fact that business growth is often unpredictable and starts-and-stops suddenly. Retaining full-time, in-house staff to support your clients as you continue to scale your business is hard. It could leave you with high payroll costs and not enough steady revenue to justify the added staffing expenses, if and when activity slows down. To manage this challenge, MSPs need to look for ways to minimize these costs and eliminate the uncertainties surrounding staffing.
Getting outside your scope without help
Another challenge MSPs face when they’re building up their business is that they lose focus. If your company is stellar at delivering UC-based solutions for SMBs and hosted PBX, does that mean you’ll automatically be awesome at delivering cyber security solutions to SMBs too? Maybe, but it’s not a slam dunk! Even if your customers trust you and love your work, their patience will quickly grow thin if they think you’re operating outside of your scope or you’re losing focus on your core skills. When MSPs attempt to do everything in-house, it can often lead to big problems like taking on too much risk, high research costs, and extended development and implementation times. Not only that, today’s complex markets, technology, compliance, and regulatory requirements can change very rapidly, which puts added pressure and risk on those companies. All of these challenges can increase costs and can decrease efficiency which could lead to a sub-par experience for customers. None of that’s good if you’re looking to drive growth! So what should MSPs do that want to scale up their business for growth?
It starts with getting a plan in place and taking a slow and disciplined approach. Because you can’t be an expert at everything and staffing and finding the right talent is often the most challenging part of scaling up, outsourcing should be part of your plan. Outsourcing works for MSPs because it allows growing organizations to zero in on what they do best and to increase output – all without increasing fixed costs or getting into a long-term commitment that can cash-strap growing companies.
To maximize resources, you need to know where outsourcing can deliver the highest value for your business. Here are key questions to help you that figure out.
- What are my most time-consuming tasks? When looking at outsourcing options, ask yourself what responsibilities are taking you away from what you do best. Is it time-consuming tasks such as working with suppliers or fielding special pricing requests? Is it post-sale activities like provisioning coordination, training, or customer billing? Or, are you spending too much time trying to provide 24x7x365 IT support for your clients? Offering stellar customer service during peak and non-peak hours is now a must-have. Outsourcing these activities to a trusted partner with specific technology experience can bring you a big boost. You’ll elevate your service delivery and foster client satisfaction and get you back to doing what you do best.
- Do I lack expertise is a particular area? It’s all about filling the gaps in your business and giving your team the best chance for success. By working with a partner that has the skills, market knowledge, tools, and expertise in a particular area, will help you scale your operations and grow your business in a new direction. On top of finding a partner to help with contract support and order management, if you want to offer your customers managed security solutions on top of data and email security tools, for example, look for a partner that brings that experience to the table.
- How can I reduce risk? The right outsourcing partner can assume and manage much of the threats your business faces every day. Find a partner that has a high level of expertise in the field so they can help you make informed decisions with confidence.
Reaching your goals
To achieve their growth goals organizations need to find ways to increase efficiencies and improve service delivery – all while not breaking the bank. Outsourcing offers a great way to scale up fast for growth and to keep the keep the focus where it should be – wowing customers!