Big technology companies and distributors are paying more attention to managed service providers in the last few years. It may be because they recognize that many different kinds of channel partners have managed services revenue streams. Or it could be because the MSP market continues to grow. So it's not surprising to see more vendor and distributor programs cropping up to serve the specific needs of MSPs. TD Synnex launched its MSP Evolve program in May to help MSPs grow.
According to TD Synnex’s 2023 Direction of Technology MSP Special Report, 80% of MSPs are focused on growing their business by expanding their technology and solution offerings, especially in high-growth technologies, such as cloud, security, data analytics and AI and entering new industry verticals.
The MSP Evolve program aggregates TD Synnex's resources and tools and puts them to work accelerating business growth for MSPs. The program is currently available for North American MSPs.
MSP Evolve was developed based on feedback from MSPs who wanted to take advantage of resources available within TD Synnex but didn’t know where to start, said Meredith Payne, senior director, cloud, at TD Synnex.
“We’d been getting feedback that they expect a lot of growth over the coming year. And they wanted our help to get there,” Payne said. “But the nice thing is, this isn’t TD Synnex going to them and saying, ‘This is what you need,’ it’s the reverse. The MSPs said to us, ‘This is where we see the growth opportunity, how can you help us take advantage of it?’ Our MSPs really built this capability for us,” she said.
How TD Synnex's MSP Evolve Works
Here's how it works. Once an MSP opts in or signs up for the program, that initiates an engagement with a TD SYNNEX subject matter expert to start doing discovery and due diligence work, Payne explained. Once strengths, industries, technical specializations and goals are identified, TD SYNNEX and the MSP decide where opportunities lie.
“It's set up to be a one-to-one conversation around tailoring our offerings, services and support to the needs that an MSP has. It’s usually anywhere from 30 minutes to 60 minutes that first conversation – getting into the weeds on where they are today, where they want to go and where they actually need help so that we can look at that together,” she said.
Once that’s determined, TD Synnex can recommend additional solutions. As an example, Payne referenced an MSP with a pure-play cloud business that could leverage their existing expertise to expand into cloud security solutions.
“Right off the bat we’d talk to them about cloud security -- that's probably one of the more common ones that we see when an MSP comes to us. They have a cloud business, and we want to make sure that we can step in and help with things like risk assessments and filling in the gaps that might exist there,” Payne said. Of course, if something is already working well for an MSP, that won’t be replaced, she added; the focus is on helping MSPs round out their services and grow.
The MSP Evolve program is set up to support MSPs of all sizes, but it can be especially impactful for smaller MSPs, Payne said. She recounted an example from the program launch at TD Synnex’s Beyond Security event in which a smaller partner signed on to the program at the event and initially asked for help with contracts and winning bids.
“They raised their hand and said, ‘This is exactly what we have been looking for.’ And so we were able to hop on with their team and go through that discovery process. Right off the bat, we introduced them to our contracts team because they needed to go after some bids, and they didn't have the capabilities to do that fully. They tried to win some bids but were not successful because they didn't have the expertise in bidding and contracts. Once we got them plugged in with our bid request assistance team, we also started working through some remote work assistance and some assessments they didn't know we could offer,” she said. That same MSP was also introduced to TD Synnex’s cloud assessments as well as how to manage their cloud spending by leveraging the StreamOne platform, she added, as well as white label storefronts. And they did so at an incredibly fast rate.
“We were able to demo, right there, what we saw as opportunities -- to demo our white label storefronts, and now that MSP is putting their own products and services there, standing those up and leveraging those so quickly. That’s something that would have taken months, if not years, right to do on their own,” she said.
Finally, TD Synnex identified and set up three partnerships that made sense with their current customer set but that they hadn’t found time to add.
“We've been able to speed up the process for them so they're selling full solutions to their team in such a short amount of time that otherwise might take years for a small MSP to add three partnerships and get access to all of these different capabilities,” she said.
In the month since the program launched, Payne said over 100 TD Synnex partners have signed up and many more have expressed interest. The goal is to have 100% of TD Synnex MSP partners leverage MSP Evolve to grow their business.
“I would say we want 100% of our MSPs to leverage these capabilities and, pardon the pun, evolve their businesses,” Payne said. “For us, the bigger question is how fast can we do that? How fast can we get them to fully optimize the program and all of the capabilities available? We have thousands of MSPs that we're working with today, and we want to see all of them leveraging this to really be able to take their business to the next level,” she said.
