Subscribe to our newsletter!
Get all latest news, exclusive deals and updates + free 30 day XEOX trial.
- Transparent per agent pricing
- No credit card required
- Cancel anytime
IT teams in enterprises are increasingly working with managed service providers (MSPs) to help their businesses succeed in today’s highly competitive marketplace. MSPs combine industry-specific knowledge with technology expertise to ensure the continued uptime of enterprise services. This combination helps accelerate revenue growth and drive operational efficiencies for their customers. Since MSPs must manage both aging and cutting-edge workloads for their customer base, they need the right set of tools, applications, procedures and teams to deliver best-in-class managed services for the right value to their customers.
Below are some best practices that we know will enable rapid customer acquisition and lasting customer relationships.
From the end user’s perspective, technology may have always been easy to use, but under the hood it has never been more complicated. No two IT infrastructures are alike, and each company and industry faces unique challenges. Healthcare providers, for example, are subject to their own unique compliance requirements, while financial firms are subject to entirely different regulations. Given the complexity of modern technologies, it’s essential that you have a deep understanding of your industry as a potential technical partner. If you don’t have experience and expertise in your industry, it’s unlikely you’ll fully understand your client’s business needs and goals. So educate yourself and get hands-on!
Leveraging next-generation solutions: MSPs must ensure that their infrastructure investments support next-generation solutions. This means enabling customers to leverage low-latency, high-throughput, data-intensive applications – such as predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning – to gain better insight into what’s happening in their business, with their customers, and in their industry.
In today’s world, security plays an increasingly important role. Even as an MSP, you need to be protected at all times. How do you know you’re protected? Too many managed service providers don’t understand that security needs to go beyond patches, firewalls and anti-virus software. So be different! Ask yourself: Are you confident that you can help your customers beyond these basics? What kind of tools do you use? Do you have a security team? Are you outsourcing key security functions? And finally, how are you protecting your own business? After all, you will own all of the company’s network credentials and data, and you need to make sure you can defend yourself before taking them over.
Every service business is a people business. The difference between a salesperson and a trusted business partner is that the former is responsible for the conversation. When it comes to building valuable business partnerships, it’s much more about mutual understanding than just closing a sale. To that end, an MSP should first be willing to learn about a customer’s potential business and its needs, challenges and priorities. Many customers want to feel that you care about their goals! When evaluating technology partners, those who ask a lot of questions and are willing to discuss the business problem are those worth working with and those who get the job and keep it.
MSPs therefore need a strategy that allows them to first build trust and then gradually work more closely with the company. Some MSPs take what they see as an opportunity-based approach by trying to win a new customer with a random initial contract. However, this approach may prove to be more serendipitous than opportunistic, as not all of these contracts lend themselves to incremental expansion.
Companies in all industries face their own unique technology challenges: whether it’s the financial services industry, which relies on legacy technologies, or the public sector, where cost and culture can act as huge barriers to digital transformation projects. There is no “one size fits all” approach, and what’s more, an approach that works for one customer today might not work in a month’s time. This has led to the success of more flexible subscription-based models. Increasingly, companies need solutions that are flexible enough to scale up and down as needed.
The portfolio is usually one of the first things a potential customer sees from your company, so it is important that it is well thought out. In order to make the right offer to a large number of potential customers, the portfolio of a good MSP should be as broad as practicable. However, it is not helpful to make the portfolio as comprehensive as humanly possible. Rather, the offer must be focused on the actual competencies so that the service does not become poor or mediocre quality. It makes sense to focus on a few industries and their specialties in order to stand out from other providers.
How quickly a managed services provider can respond in the event of a problem is an important evaluation criterion – especially with regard to worst-case scenarios. The provision of 24×7 customer support represents the basis of good customer service in this context. The availability of the services offered is also a sign of managed services quality. Short response times and high availability indicate a good service provider – if these are statements that correspond to reality. Security and stability of the services are just as important.
Always question how the managed service provider intends to meet these quality criteria. For example, one question might be: On what technological basis are the services based? Or: How many IT experts with which qualifications are responsible for providing and operating the IT service?
With an RMM solution, you can remotely monitor your customers’ IT infrastructures and systems, saving MSPs time, money and resources. Instead of traveling to the customer site to determine the status of devices and networks, technicians can check everything remotely. This allows you to monitor and manage multiple accounts in real time and proactively address issues by holistically examining customer systems through an RMM’s management console. RMM software also enables MSPs to automate routine tasks such as software patching, which reduces the likelihood of human error (e.g., technicians missing customer endpoints).
MSP without RMM would be like a car mechanic without any tools.
Choosing the right RMM solution for your needs takes a little work. All the benefits of an RMM Tool you can read in this article. The benefits of RMM software for MSPs are so numerous that it is not surprising that most MSP companies have already implemented a similar solution. Enterprises have unique needs and requirements and no software platform can be perfect in such a situation. It is pointless to try to find an ideal off-the-shelf software system that meets all your business needs. The smart thing to do would be to modify the application for your specific needs, worker skill levels, budget, and other factors. For these reasons, do not hurry and invest in well-publicized trendy solutions. Though these may be widely used, they may not be the best fit for your particular wants. If you have not yet decided on a solution, XEOX is a must try.
hs2n Informationstechnologie GmbH
Phone: +43-720-505765
E-Mail: support@xeox.com
UID-Number: ATU61747603
Company Reg- No.: FN262506P
Get all latest news, exclusive deals and updates + free 30 day XEOX trial.