For MSPs, breaking into new markets can boost revenue and cultivate more opportunities to scale. But challenges such as upfront time and dollar costs often keep MSPs siloed into their specialties; ...
For MSPs, breaking into new markets can boost revenue and cultivate more opportunities to scale. But challenges such as upfront time and dollar costs often keep MSPs siloed into their specialties; meaning exploring new markets to break into can be a challenge. Every MSP wants to expand the services they offer to clients, but if you mainly focus on backup and recovery, dipping into a new market such as leasing hardware or phone management can be a considerable time investment. While there may be a significant need from your customer base, your business shouldn’t invest a large amount of time and money in becoming experts in another product or service when there is an easier solution. The key to adding new services only involves mastering one skill, and that skill is building partnerships with other vendors. Cultivating relationships with other businesses where you can recommend one another to customers can lead to increased profits without the same risks of your business learning a new market. Here are some easy ways MSPs can partner with other vendors to offer more services to clients and break into new markets. Resell equipment through a leasing company Almost every client you work with is going to need help acquiring hardware. Be it phones, computers, printers, or routers; the hardware is essential to any office environment. Every business needs these vital pieces of equipment to operate; even your own com To learn about the right tools to use, read more here. Ryan Goodman is one of the Founders of ConnectBooster and serves as its President. He primarily focuses on working with the sales team to develop their process and partners with MSPs to help them with their cash flow issues.
Question: How much time does your business lose every month on redundant tasks? The cost varies from business to business, but IT service providers know downtime translates to lost profits because it diverts resources away from revenue-generating tasks. There are several ways companies can reduce the amount of lost time their teams experience on a weekly or monthly basis, such as tracking time to non-profitable tasks or time lost due to insufficient planning. However, one of the most simple changes a company can make is to use technology built for their needs. For instance, MSPs and IT providers require software that can manage tickets, equipment requests, and various recurring or one-off bills. If a business is using software not designed with those features, then the tools limited functionality is going to impede teams and create time-sucking manual workarounds that eat into their revenue-driving activities. Since decreasing the amount of time a business loses every month can impact their bottom line, here are a few things to do to limit the time spent on non-productive activities. Find software that automates manual tasks Time sunk on administrative tasks comes in several forms, from equipment breaking or failures in technology, but it can also include employees spending time and energy on internal tasks. MSPs fall victim to manually completing tasks instead of working with software to automate repetitive processes for them. Many times they even hire interns or spend weekends on manual tasks, instead of using a tool to automate those tasks. Why pay someone to do a task that could be automated? It saves time, and time is money, and $10/hour x 8 hours a day adds up quickly. Spending a little money every month to automate those pesky tasks that eat up one’s day is a great way to decrease costs as a business and will usually be cheaper in the long run. Make sure tools integrate with one another Business tools must be compatible and integrate to automate as much work as possible. Anytime tools do not integrate with each other; someone is going to have to have to bridge the gap and manually transfer the data; otherwise, there is a risk of something being missed. For example, if a business is using a specific CRM or PSA tool to track work via service tickets, the details from that ticket must be carried over from CRM or PSA to the software used for billing clients. But if using a billing software designed for retail, or even a different service-based industry, details between the two systems may be lost if they can’t transfer data between one another. Working with tools designed for IT professionals and MSPs means better integrations, which saves time and money by automating more data and requiring less hands-on management. Final thoughts on saving time Several things cause businesses to lose time every month on non-profitable tasks, and some are unavoidable. But automations and integrations are big ones and relatively easy to fix. Everything that increases operations and internal management of a team translates to better customer service, better response times, and people being able to get their tasks done as much as possible. To learn about the right tools to use, read more here. Ryan Goodman is one of the Founders of ConnectBooster and serves as its President. He primarily focuses on working with the sales team to develop their process and partners with MSPs to help them with their cash flow issues.
