MSPs
Can you discuss why customer acquisition is identified as the number one challenge for MSPs? Are there insights into the specific difficulties or recommended strategies to overcome these challenges? Technology and new solutions are constantly evolving, but if you ask MSPs about challenges they face, whether it was ten years ago or current day, new customer acquisition remains top of mind. When it comes to customer acquisition, it depends on where the MSP
is in the market. A lot of smaller MSPs don’t have dedicated salespeople or a dedicated marketing department and oſten don’t have the F-word I oſten refer to, the FOCUS as to how to acquire a customer. In the enterprise space, the challenge isn’t acquiring customers, it’s
finding the right customers. For example, aſter talking with partners, some MSPs get rid of customers who don’t standardize or aren’t taking cybersecurity seriously. I know it seems like blasphemy to go fire your customer but if they’re not subscribing to what you’re doing, that’s dragging you down and adding a headwind. On the high end, it’s finding the right type of customer that fits their kind of kind of strategy to really accelerate their top and bottom line.
Why has the co-managed services model been adopted by over half of MSPs? Tere’s a much bigger awareness that they can’t do it all, and they need to co-partner to get to their goals. And a big element to that is the labour shortage. Back in the day, MSPs were walking in and talking to the business
owners. Now MSPs are walking in and talking to the CIO or IT director of these mid-market companies. Why? Because the mid-market companies have two problems, the pressure to hire while keeping costs down. Tat’s where you can use a co-managed partner. By investing in co-managed services, organizations get access to
a pool of highly skilled IT professionals without the hassle of hiring and managing in-house staff, meaning they won’t have to worry about finding top talent on their own and can provide a more affordable option that gives organizations access to the expertise they need. For MSPs, co-managed services open a new world of opportunities; they can expand their service portfolio, attract new customers, and deepen their relationships with existing clients. Tey can also diversify their revenue streams and provide tailored value-added services that cater to each client’s unique needs.
How does this model contribute to the growth opportunities identified in the research, and what specific advantages does it offer to MSPs? I think the biggest opportunity for MSPs to grow their revenue is for them to go into a co-managed model and be part of a bigger organization’s IT footprint or IT plan for an MSP to grow their bottom line and offer additional services. My advice to the MSP is to be specific—use the tip of the arrow
approach when you’re trying to get into these mid-market accounts and say hey, we can help you with a specific service, whether that be patching, back up, or cybersecurity. Also, be concentrated into the persona that you’re going aſter; a CTO is likely to have deeper knowledge in technology than a managing director—they usually want more detail and have a hands-on approach, so think about the buyer personas first to better understand exactly who you are selling to, then you can land and expand once you are in.
www.pcr-online.biz Tink of it as another economy of scale. Just as MSPs use the
same platforms and systems to service their customers for greater efficiency, a better understanding of buying personas can create a more efficient sales process.
How are MSPs currently deploying AI in their managed services? According to our survey, MSPs are primarily using AI either as a feature in their existing technology stack, such as in threat detection, or disaster recovery for example, or for marketing purposes like content creation, but a lot are still in the “wait and see” bucket. My challenge to MSPs is to find a way they can leverage AI to gain
even a small increase in their efficiency and start there. At N-able, we’re finding around a 15% efficiency uptick when our team use it for things such as scripts and policies. So, imagine an MSP taking that advantage into their business,
that extra 15%. Maybe that means you don’t need to hire that extra person, or maybe it means your MSP can have focus on a little bit of a higher value project, or you just take some of that to the bottom line and increase your profitability.
Can you share insights into the strategies MSPs are adopting for cloud and hybrid infrastructure management? MSPs need to be able to manage all the things—we live and work in a hybrid world and the MSP must have the ability to manage all the IT effectively and securely, including M365 workloads, Azure, SaaS applications, and on-premises. Having a clear, real-time line of sight into all the MSP manages is a game changer for the way they manage, monitor, and secure their SME customers’ data. Every MSP and the crowds of environments they manage are
different, and they must manage all of that regardless of what is thrown at them which can be a daunting task. MSPs have an opportunity to simplify. Here at N-able, we’re giving them one platform, with the ability to monitor, manage, automate, and secure the physical and cloud world from a single dashboard. It’s all about driving efficiency for our MSPs.
What opportunities and challenges are identified in this domain, and how are MSPs planning to navigate them? Hybrid is going to be with us for a long time, so my advice to MSPs is embrace the hybrid world. While managing the cloud is a growing requirement, with cloud
infrastructure management coming out as a top priority in the study, there’s nothing to indicate the requirement for on-premises support won’t be here for years to come. With on-premises environments and the desire for quality cloud
management being top of mind, MSPs need to have solutions for this hybrid world to protect, monitor, and manage both on-prem and cloud environments effectively for their customers. But MSPs aren’t just providing the technology, they are also advisors. SMEs have a breadth of devices and operating systems, Windows, Linux, and Apple, laptops, mobile phones, and tablets, but many don’t know where to start when it comes to securing and managing them all. Tat’s where the MSP comes in, giving advice on the best solution, applications, and strategy to better manage their hybrid digital environments, giving them peace of mind to get on with the day-to-day.
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