ChannelPro-SMB - Akash Saraf's Blog

How to Separate Yourself from the MSP Pack

Akash Saraf — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 20:13:55 GMT

How to Separate Yourself from the MSP Pack

Ideas for distinguishing your company from other managed services providers.

By Akash Saraf

Let's face it, the managed services market is a little more crowded these days than it used to be. Though there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity out there, odds are good you're no longer the only MSP in your area no matter where you do business. Not surprisingly, then, a lot of MSPs I talk to ask me the same question: With so many companies offering such similar services, what can I do to separate myself from the pack?

As it happens, I have lots of ideas on this topic, but here are a few quick suggestions:

Burnish your brand: Business owners gravitate towards vendors who project professionalism and know-how, so make sure your company always looks big-time even if you're only a small firm. Everything from your business cards to your marketing materials should silently position you as an experienced market leader.

In particular, if you haven't done so recently, invest some time in your Web site. It's amazing to me how many MSPs have incomplete, out-of-date Web sites-or barely have a Web site at all. If you want to stand out from the competition, your Web presence should be visually appealing, easy to navigate, informative, and (maybe most important of all) free of technical jargon. You're trying to impress businesspeople, so your messaging should emphasize business needs and business value.

Make yourself easy to find: If someone searches Google for technology providers in your area, does your company's name appear at the top of the results list? If not, brush up your search engine optimization skills. Sometimes the simplest way to distinguish yourself from competitors is just to be more visible than they are.

Make yourself easy to reach: Most customers value responsiveness, so make a point of replying to emails, texts, and voicemails quickly. Better yet, skip voicemail altogether whenever possible and have real people answer incoming calls instead, even if it means hiring an answering service. Clients will appreciate the personal touch.

Get social: Here at Zenith Infotech, we're big believers in using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as marketing tools. We've found them to be a great way not just to distribute information but to really get people engaged and interacting with our company. Savvy MSPs can achieve the same results.

Be careful, though. It's easy to sink more time into social media than is ultimately worthwhile. Keep a close eye on how much effort you're putting into online posting and make sure the payoff you're getting in return justifies it.

Note that nothing I've suggested here requires wholesale changes in what you do or how you do it. The key ideas are to examine every aspect of your company from the customer's point of view and to pay as much attention to small matters as you do to large ones. In the end, differentiating yourself from the competition is mostly a matter of being just a bit better than everyone else at a lot of little things.

AKASH SARAF is CEO of Zenith Infotech.

4 Top Considerations for New MSPs

Akash Saraf — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:37:41 GMT

4 Top Considerations for New MSPs

Several key things to keep in mind when launching a managed services practice.

By Akash Saraf

Launching a managed services practice involves dozens of tasks and decisions, so newcomers to the field often ask me where they should focus their attention. What four or five actions will best help them kick-start their managed services business? Here's what I tell them:

1. Simplify your service plans: Some new MSPs think that offering lots of service opt ions will benefit their customers. In fact, it's more likely to confuse them. I recommend limiting your service packages to just two options: A stripped-down, basic plan for companies that want 24/7 monitoring but little more, and an all-you-can-eat package that includes everything from helpdesk calls to onsite support. That way you won't end up wasting time during sales calls parsing out the distinctions between your six tiers of service.

2. Simplify your pricing: Rather than quote a per-server or per-desktop rate, analyze each potential customer's environment and offer them a flat, all-inclusive monthly fee. That will be easier for them to understand, and harder for them to pick apart with questions. Build a little growing room into your prices too, so that the client doesn't end up paying more every time they add a new laptop or two. To protect your margins, you can simply spell out in your contract exactly how your rates will change if the customers adds more than, say, two servers or five desktops.

3. Get a marketing program started: Getting your old break-fix customers onto managed service contracts can be a labor-intensive process, and it will only take your new business so far anyway. Signing up new customers is the key to achieving significant, long-term growth. To accomplish that, you need to create a disciplined end-to-end marketing program and stick with it. Choose a few industries that you know especially well, and buy a targeted list of contacts at relevant companies in your region. Then start inviting those people by phone to seminars about technology challenges in their vertical. Follow up diligently with the people who attend and the people who don't attend but express interest. Before long, you'll be bringing in new business every month.

4. Choose the right managed services software: Last but not least, make sure you have the tools you need to provide excellent service to your clients right from the start. Remote monitoring and management systems aren't one-size-fits-all, so be certain that free evaluations are available for any system you're interested in. Also, look for an RMM solution that offers pay-as-you-go pricing. The last thing you want to do when getting a new business off the ground is make major investments in software licenses before revenue starts coming in.

Of course, there are plenty of other issues to consider when you're getting into managed services, but concentrating on these four actions will set your new business up for a quick start. I know because I've seen it work for plenty of MSPs before.

AKASH SARAF is CEO of Zenith Infotech.

Why You Should Integrate Your RMM and PSA Systems

Akash Saraf — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:53:42 GMT

Why You Should Integrate Your RMM and PSA Systems

Linking RMM and PSA results in a single, tied-together view of technical and business data.

By Akash Saraf

In today's lean economy, no one can afford to waste time or miss out on revenue. So when I meet a managed services provider whose RMM and PSA systems aren't integrated, it always surprises me a little.

Many RMM systems these days can exchange information with popular PSA products, like Autotask, Tigerpaw, and ConnectWise. For MSPs, the result is a single, integrated view of technical and business data, so that all of the information you need to run your managed services practice is available in one place.

Better yet, linking your RMM and PSA systems enables you to automate tedious manual tasks. Whenever your RMM system issues an alert, for example, your PSA system can automatically create a ticket. Conversely, if one of your technicians opens a ticket after fielding a service call, the PSA system can automatically assign it to your NOC. Plus, changes you make in one system automatically get reflected in the other, so that closing a task in one place effectively closes it in both applications.

All of that adds up to faster responsiveness on your end, and thus better customer service. And since your staff spends less time on data entry, they can spend more time helping customers, which improves utilization rates.

And it gets even better. Many MSPs tell me that they often end up underbilling clients simply because tracking end user hardware inventories can be such a challenge. With integrated RMM/PSA systems, however, asset tracking takes place automatically. Whenever your RMM software sees that a customer has added new desktops or servers, it passes the information along to your PSA software, which updates the client's contract accordingly. As a result, you always charge customers precisely what they owe you.

The most strategic benefit, though, is having better data about your customers. For starters, connecting your RMM and PSA systems enables you to generate comprehensive reports for your clients showing exactly what you did for them, as well as why and when you did it. That can help you demonstrate for customers that they're getting real value for the money they pay you.

More importantly, using integrated RMM and PSA systems gives you an end-to-end view of a customer's environment. To remain competitive over the years ahead, managed service providers must evolve from mere technicians into trusted technology advisors. It's not enough to know how much hardware a given customer is using. To really cement your hold on an account you need to know how and why your customers use all of that hardware. That's the kind of deeper understanding of your clients that synchronized RMM and PSA systems can help you acquire.

All in all, it's hard to see why any MSP wouldn't take advantage of such valuable functionality. If your RMM and PSA applications aren't exchanging data, find out if they're capable of doing so. If they are, there's no time like the present to begin streamlining your business, boosting income, and improving client relationships through RMM/PSA integration.

AKASH SARAF is CEO of Zenith Infotech.

How Cloud Computing Is Likely to Impact the SMB Channel

ChannelPro-SMB — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:12:58 GMT

How Cloud Computing Is Likely to Impact the SMB Channel

By Akash Saraf

Seems like you can't open a magazine or browse the Web lately without coming across something about cloud computing. Now it's my turn to join the conversation, because I've been thinking a lot lately about how cloud computing is likely to impact the SMB channel.

Before proceeding, I should define my terms. People use the words in many different ways, but when I say "cloud computing" here I'm talking about infrastructure resources such as processing power and storage that are hosted by a third party and delivered via the Internet. Billing is usually based on a flat, monthly fee that scales up or down dynamically. The more you use, the more you pay, and vice versa.

Media hubbub aside, cloud computing is still in its infancy. In fact, I've seen projections from Gartner suggesting that it will be another seven or eight years before adoption rates reach 25 percent. But make no mistake about it: Eventually, SMBs are going to buy into cloud computing in a big way. After all, most SMB executives hate making large capital investments in hardware and have little to no IT staff. They're almost sure to find the idea of paying an offsite IT expert to take care of their infrastructure and maintenance needs for a reasonable, fixed cost very attractive. That's why industry giants like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are all constructing massive cloud data centers these days.

That leaves SMB channel partners with three choices. They can do nothing while those giant vendors chip away at their customer base. They can sign up to be resellers for those big providers and earn very little margin. Or they can create their own cloud offering and collect margins potentially as high as 25 to 50 percent.

Needless to say, I strongly believe that last option is the smart one. The only question is how to go about creating your cloud computing service. I can't offer a one-size-fits-all answer, but I do have some basic recommendations.

If you're a managed services provider, think back to one of the key decisions you faced when you first got into that business. You could either spend a lot of money upfront on a NOC or you could partner with a firm that let you tap into their NOC on a pay-as-you-go basis. Choosing the former path meant waiting a long while before breaking even on your initial investment. Choosing the latter path allowed you to begin profiting from managed services almost immediately.

The story will be much the same with cloud computing. VARs and solution providers will have the choice of either building their own cloud or partnering with a world-class cloud vendor. Assuming that vendor lets you white label their services and retain complete control over client relationships, you're likely to find the latter option to be the quickest, easiest, and most profitable route into cloud computing.

Whatever you decide to do, though, the really important thing is to get started on a strategy now. Cloud computing is a "when" technology, not an "if". You can't afford to be left out.

AKASH SARAF is CEO of Zenith Infotech.

"Business Continuity" Is Key to Growth of MSPs

ChannelPro-SMB — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:30:18 GMT

"Business Continuity" Is Key to Growth of MSPs

Selling managed business continuity services is lucrative, especially in the legal, healthcare, and accounting verticals.

By Akash Saraf

Welcome to the inaugural post on my ChannelProSMB blog! I'm delighted to have this new forum for sharing ideas, observations, and musings about managed services and the IT world generally.

I spend a lot of time talking with MSPs, so I thought I'd kick things off by addressing a question that comes up often in those conversations: What are the most effective ways to grow my managed services practice?

There are a lot of answers, but for now I want to focus on one particular strategy that's making a big difference for many of Zenith Infotech's partners--selling managed business continuity services. MSPs who build outreach marketing campaigns around business continuity rather than remote monitoring and management are seeing very impressive results.

Why? Times are tough and money is tighter than ever. Most SMBs are run by people with little grounding in technology who can have trouble understanding the value of proactive server and desktop management. With all the activity we've seen around managed services we still only see about a 15-18% attach rate in small to medium size businesses in the US/Canadian market. But every CEO, CFO, and CIO out there understands perfectly what will happen to their business if they lose access to critical applications and data. Even people who mistakenly see effective server and desktop management as a "nice to have" view business continuity as the ultimate "need to have."

We're finding this to be particularly true in the legal, healthcare, and accounting verticals. Organizations in those industries have an especially urgent need for up-to-the-minute data retention, due partly to the nature of their work and partly to a variety of stringent government regulations. They can't afford to make do with the contents of yesterday's backup tape.

Yet plenty of firms in those fields and others still don't have a business continuity solution, mostly because so many of the offerings out there are costly and require a lot of administration. If you can make business continuity easy for them by delivering it as an affordably-priced managed service they'll often jump at the chance despite the stagnant economy.

Then, as you develop trust with the customer over time, you can use business continuity as the entry point for a broader relationship encompassing all of your services. After all, it's only logical that you'd want to make sure the servers you're backing up are being managed properly too.

One final tip: Always direct a business continuity pitch to an SMB's top executives, and be sure to say "business continuity" instead of "storage" or "backup". Our partners tell us that those latter, more technical, words often cause a prospect's eyes to glaze over. When an executive hears "business continuity," however, they usually want to learn more. And at the end of the day, getting a dialogue started with as many decision-makers as possible is the real key to growing your managed services practice.

AKASH SARAF is CEO of Zenith Infotech.