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Have you considered managed services for your practice?

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A guide to selling managed servicesManaged services is a bit of a buzzword (words?) at the moment & for seemingly good reason:

  • - Annuity revenue streams - potentially
  • - Standardised customer offerings - potentially
  • - Predictable business growth - potentially

The key word of course is "potentially" & that's because building an MSP (managed services practice) isn't for everyone. Many VARs I talk to have a very healthy break-fix business model & others choose to focus on a pay-as-you-go menu of offerings, ie, "Our silver package gets you X, Y & Z".

One thing I've noticed though is that more & more SBS resellers are seeing the benefits of managed services as a way to build a more predictable business. By moving your customers to an all-up payment plan, in which you'll then cover all eventualities & ensure that the stuff just keeps working, allows both you & the customer to better predict their costs & time. This is great for the business owner as they can then more accurately budget what their IT spend will be, & great for you as you can then budget for the year.

Of course you'll need to prepare for this move to a new model & so following is a few things (definitely not exhaustive) that you'd need to consider:

  • Contract - what will you cover, how will you do it, when will they pay, what reviews are in place, what's the dispute resolution etc
  • Which platform will you use to manage your practice? Ie, Microsoft Systems Centre, Kaseya, Level Platforms etc
  • How much should you charge?
  • How do you migrate current customers over to the new model?

Matt Makowicz of Ambition Mission and Karl Palachuk of KP Enterprises (both leading SBSC partners) have written some very useful books on the topic & so if you're interested in managed services, then they could be a very useful starting place.

For those of you in Australia who'll be going along to the Windows Server 2008 launch in Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane or Canberra, then make sure to come along to the Small Business Partner session in the evening as I'll be giving away a copy of Matt's book "A Guide to Selling Managed Services.".

Your thoughts?

Robbie