Empowering Your MSP Business to Grow and Prosper—One Post at a Time

The managed IT services space has gone through major changes over the last few years. The software we now support and the products we sell have been updated and improved drastically. What’s more, the shift to the cloud with Office 365 has meant that we all had to learn new skills and do some adapting of our own—with both our solutions and our way of thinking.

Luckily, many of us in the IT world are problem solvers and solution providers. New technologies provide new ways to solve old problems, and we embrace it! There are many growth opportunities available for MSPs today, so let’s take a deeper look into a few that can help you bring in extra revenue this year.

There are two main ways to improve your bottom line: increase your revenue or decrease your costs. For many managed services providers (MSPs) today, you’re busy dealing with tickets going up and head counts remaining flat, which makes it hard to find the time to develop new lines of business or aggressively expand your client base. Focusing on cost reduction is a great way to increase profits and address the issue of higher ticket counts, but where can you start? First, you need to adopt a lean philosophy. 

Lean philosophy was developed in manufacturing, but has been adapted to the service industry, and the principles that drive waste reduction in other lines of business can easily be applied to the MSP. Here are six tips that will help you create more value for clients with fewer resources and become a more lean organization.

As a managed services provider (MSP), you’re primarily focused on delivering exceptional IT services to clients and optimizing your efficiency. However, this may cause you to let sales and marketing slip to the bottom of your list of priorities. But when you’re busy managing your existing client base, how can you ensure that you’re filling the sales pipeline and growing your MSP business?

Running a business is hard enough without also having to be a sales expert. Follow the following six steps to improve your sales effectiveness.

As technology continues to evolve and mature, so too do the challenges facing those in the IT industry. This is especially true for managed services providers (MSPs). Hiring and retaining technical talent is becoming increasingly difficult, putting many MSPs at a disadvantage to maintain a lean operation and maximize profits. What’s more, some MSPs are seeing decreased margins as a result of downward market trends. So, what can MSPs do to counteract these trends and avoid falling behind?

Fortunately, MSPs who partner with Continuum are able to overcome these challenges—among others—by leveraging our transformative IT management and service delivery platform. In the infographic below, we’ll take a deeper look at the three main ways MSPs can benefit from Continuum’s model and dive into the data behind how Continuum partners are achieving greater growth and profitability.

Over the past couple of years, my company has evolved and grown to reach the $10 million mark and beyond. How did we accomplish that? Well, we tackled it in a handful of different ways—some of which I’ve laid out in my previous posts—but the most prominent was the exercise of constantly looking at ourselves and our industry in the mirror. By taking the time to consider the best plan of action and assess where we need to evolve and how we can innovate, our MSP business was able to remain relevant, competitive, and progressive.

To wrap up this series, I’m going to share how MSPs can take full advantage of the future IT has to offer. With that being said, here are a couple of key trends we’re seeing in the crystal ball.

As a managed services provider (MSP), you likely entered this line of business because you wanted to help organizations optimize their IT infrastructures, get the most out of their technology, and become a helpful and strategic business partner. What started as a dream has now turned into a full-time business—one that you must ensure remains successful.

Now, it’s probable that you didn’t earn your MBA to become an MSP, but now that you’re in charge of your business you need to become well-versed in the business-side of things—like finances, accounting and mergers and acquisitions. For example, you may have a goal this year to grow your bottom line, but what does that actually mean? What goes into that metric? If you want your MSP business to grow and succeed, you need to start thinking like a chief finance officer (CFO). Use this post as your guide to better understand the factors that can impact your profitability and learn how to maximize your managed services margins.

In this day and age, achieving “operational efficiency” sure sounds like something every managed services provider (MSP) should want to do. It implies a smoothly run operation that is functioning at peak levels of performance and thus optimizing all the resources on hand. We oftentimes talk about MSPs needing to achieve operational efficiency, but what exactly do we mean by that and how can you actually accomplish this as an MSP?

As a managed services provider (MSP), you strive to be an IT superhero for your clients—covering all of their needs and providing exceptional service—all within a certain budget. Unfortunately, this is often easier said than done. Supporting your customers’ every need can become wearying, overwhelming and costly, which is why many MSPs are beginning to seek outside help. Every superhero needs a sidekick, and outsourcing can empower you to elevate your business and become the leading provider you strive to be.

Whether you’re looking to free up your staff to work on more strategic projects or reduce in-house costs and resources, outsourcing has plenty of advantages for MSPs. Let’s take a closer look at the top five benefits of augmenting your business model by outsourcing certain functions to a third-party provider.

Today, we released an analysis from Service Leadership, Inc., the leading financial and operational benchmark organization for MSPs and IT solution providers worldwide, that indicates that Continuum’s partners are able to achieve greater profitability, operate more efficiently and withstand market pressures better than other MSPs as a result of our transformative platform and business model. Let’s take a deeper look into these findings and how leveraging Continuum could be the key to becoming a world class MSP.

There is little that has been more valuable to our MSP growth than our ability to create strong relationships with CEOs and other key client executives. Executives are notorious for stonewalling IT initiatives for budgetary or other reasons, but these relationships have proved to be the opposite for us. The technical responsibilities of today’s executives are changing, and most would love to have a strong technical resource on which to rely.

In my previous post, I shared five ways you can use your company culture to your advantage in order to grow your MSP business. In this post, I'm going to switch perspectives from MSP owner to CEO. MSPs and IT professionals are often seen as mid-level business resources managed by the Operations Manager. The larger the organization, the lower it seems the MSP naturally sits in this organizational structure. However, if you want to be a $10 million MSP, you need to get a seat at the table. Here are some tips we've learned in our pursuit of building effective executive relationships.