Every business understandably wants to increase their profit margins, and managed service providers (MSPs) are no different. There’s one simple, industry-recommended way for you to do so: By using a Network Operations Center (NOC).
Take it from one of our many partners who saw revenue and profit margins skyrocket after using a NOC. Indeed, MySherpa increased revenue from $500,000 to $3 million and generated a 50 percent gross profit margin while leveraging Continuum's NOC services and related offerings, according to President Ethan Tancredi.
You know using a NOC can be great for your MSP business, but how specifically can it improve your profit margins?
Four Key Benefits of NOC Support
1. Provide after-hours support so your staff doesn’t have to
IT management has evolved into a 24x7x365 endeavor these days, as businesses operate internationally and never rest. Unfortunately, your staff needs rest. A crisis can occur at any time, but it would be impossible (not to mention very expensive) to find in-house technicians willing to sacrifice all their nights, weekends and holidays. With NOC support, you’ll have a dedicated team working around-the-clock to proactively resolve any issues that may arise, ensuring that your clients avoid costly downtime and remain happy with your managed services.
2. Free up your technicians to focus on projects that actually produce revenue
Monitoring networks and performing routine updates through all hours of the night are important services to provide for your clients; unfortunately, they’re also rote, tedious tasks that don’t actually generate additional revenue for your MSP. Imagine if your technicians, instead, were solely focused on relationship building that leads to upsell and cross-sell opportunities.
For example, creating value-added service packages for your clients that focus on desktop management, hosted emails and cloud storage is a great way to diversify your offerings beyond just network monitoring or break-fix support. Diversification is the key to growing your client base and bottom line, and that takes time from your technicians, time that could be freed up by using a NOC.
Learn How to Maximize your MSP Margins with Pricing Strategies
3. Grow accounts without having to grow payroll
MSPs often feel like they don’t have enough technicians, and highly-skilled technicians are not only expensive, but a rare breed. Having to pass on a project or a request from client because you didn’t have sufficient resources to handle it is a painful pill for any MSP to swallow. A NOC frees you up to scale your team to the size of your projects without going through a time-consuming hiring process or adding to your payroll. A NOC serves as an extension of your staff, expanding your scope of services. Best of all, since you only pay for what you use, you can easily scale back as needed to avoid the nightmare of unneeded or wasted labor costs.
4. Gain access to high-level tech support
As we mentioned earlier, hiring high-level technicians with a wide range of skills can get very expensive. But, without those highly-skilled technicians, MSPs might have to turn away certain projects and requests from clients. A world-class NOC full of certified and well-trained technicians can help you bridge this talent gap, ensuring that you’ll be well-positioned to serve your clients, even if you don’t have the in-house technicians.
Every MSP wants to provide top-of-the-line tech support for their clients around the clock, but doing so on a budget and with a small staff can be very challenging. Leveraging a NOC is the perfect solution, saving your company valuable time and resources and freeing up your in-house technicians, allowing you to allocate your assets toward revenue-driving projects that increase your profit margins and grow your business.
Christina Hurley is a product marketing specialist at Continuum. Read more Continuum blogs here.
