Is your MSP ready with the required talent when that big revenue-generating client arrives at your doorstep? Do you have the necessary team members that this huge account needs?
The critical question is: Are you ready to scale effectively with profitability?
It can be challenging to hire the right talent, especially when you’re ready to scale. For some MSPs, a lack of access to local technical talent can be a challenge. This is especially true with the Great Resignation and, more currently, The Great Regret (hiring the wrong individual), haunting our talent landscape. For MSPs, it can be budget constraints when looking for the right skill sets and talent while needing to maintain a profitable business. Amid challenges like these, the pressure to quickly fill open technical positions can often lead to rushed hiring of talent who ultimately isn’t a culture or skill fit, bringing disruption rather than business growth.
Now that remote working processes have been accepted as a new reality, many MSPs have recently started to partner with technology companies that provide trained dedicated engineers and already have an existing global footprint. The willingness to look for talent across geographical boundaries expands access to a larger tech talent pool while creating a more diverse workforce, strong business continuity, and cost savings.
Access to a larger talent pool
Small MSPs often lack HR resources. Only a few have a full-time talent recruiter. Even if they partner, they continue to face fierce recruitment competition from large technology corporations. Plus, it’s not enough to have a readily available pool of tech talent that meets your criteria, such as level of education and years of experience. Every hire should also have a robust set of tech expertise and the appropriate soft skills. They should be trained in MSP tools, such as PSAs, RMMs, cloud, security, and backup technologies and processes. At IT By Design, each engineer on our bench is trained in a 60-day “MSP Way” boot camp to learn channel tools and processes.
Transitioning from a local or national talent pool to a global one should be a key strategy in your MSP growth plan. This way, you get access to a wider tech talent with the skills necessary to keep up with an incredibly dynamic business landscape such as Managed IT. As long as the cross-border tech talent understands the managed services business model and your MSP’s unique approach to customer service, you can minimize the cost of extensively training them on ticket lifecycles, dispatch, time entries, escalation workflows, SLA management, email etiquette, and customer service.
A new approach to business continuity
No matter how prepared your MSP is for tech failures or natural disasters, having team members across borders can provide an additional layer of business continuity for both your MSP and your customers. Engineers hired locally can only monitor critical servers and applications between typical 9-5, Monday-Friday hours. More often than not, they don’t have the bandwidth to extend their support past this time window. Downtime and lack of response can irritate your customers when an outage occurs during off-hours and isn’t identified, acknowledged, or resolved until the next morning. Having a team member who can seamlessly pick up where your day-shift service desk leaves off provides better business continuity and customer service. At IT by Design, we recently expanded our bench to the Philippines to further our reach and take advantage of the nation’s high-quality English language skills.
Remote dedicated global teams of engineers who work across time zones worldwide are available for more hours throughout the day. They can respond to customers more promptly than teams working under local time zones. This is particularly important if you have a global customer base.
A 24x7 approach to business continuity can also ultimately help retain your workforce as it contributes to a better work/life balance. With this, in-house talent is less likely to become overwhelmed with after-hours support or tight project deadlines that push them to work beyond their shift hours, negatively impacting employee satisfaction.
Diversity as a differentiator
A diverse workforce can help you bring in MSP-trained engineers with different backgrounds and perspectives for improved decision-making, greater innovation, and higher engagement in the workplace. Research from McKinsey also found that enterprises with a more racially diverse workforce had a 35% higher likelihood of seeing above-average financial returns in their industries.
Looking beyond your city, state, or even country can be one way to add more diversity to your workforce. By adding more racial and ethnic diversity to your team, you can avoid “groupthink,” a psychological phenomenon that encourages homogeneous groups to value harmony and conformity over critical analysis. Let’s not forget: The blending of ideas and perspectives from various cultures is the best possible recipe for creativity and innovation that can take your MSP to new heights.
One of the other benefits of diversity in the workplace is improved employee morale and engagement. Engineers who feel engaged become more dedicated in their work, thus delivering better results. Additionally, striving for a diverse workforce can make your MSP more appealing to job seekers and existing employees alike. According to Deloitte, millennials tend to stay longer with companies that understand the needs of a diverse workforce. Compared to the previous generations, they actively seek out companies that specifically and openly value diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Not to mention, having a diverse team also makes your MSP appealing to many potential customers.
Business expansion in new markets
A primary motive for MSPs to go global is to gain access to new sources of revenue. Domestic MSPs are often overwhelmed by economic shifts in the local market. By taking your business global, you gain access to a much larger customer base. There are even more opportunities to increase your revenues from new customers even if you have saturated your markets domestically. Hiring globally is the next step in successful growth overseas without losing a competitive edge against global MSPs. With the entire world now a potential marketplace, hiring local staff can lead to cultural insight and understanding consumer behaviors regarding your MSP’s business standards.
A global workforce can enable your MSP not only to reach new customers but give you resources to better communicate with the audience in any market. Expansion into different countries (such as European ones) means you’re gaining the possibility of bilingual workers – a competitive advantage for supporting local and international clients.
Increased innovation and improved productivity
Innovation stems from the ability to approach an issue and find solutions from different perspectives. When you have a team of people with different skills and cultural backgrounds, you are more likely to get new ideas. This approach can enhance creativity in customer management and drive innovation in usual service delivery. When multiple voices and personalities come together, you get a fresh perspective on the task at hand. This can increase productivity and strengthen your competitive advantage as an MSP.
Research shows that up to 31 percent of HR professionals consider productivity to be one of the top benefits of global teams working in various time zones. International teams are less likely to report having problems than teams from a single geographical location. They tend to be highly collaborative across borders, with fewer problems reported.
Profitability of Cash Confidence
By reducing your labor costs, you’ll significantly improve your margins and EBITDA. Gone are the heavy investments in recruiting via online advertisements/posts, the need to provide medical benefits, and the need to secure work space in your office since your new team members are remote. Additionally, service leadership benchmarking reports conclude that MSPs who use a Master MSP for their NOC and tech talent needs are more profitable.
In Closing
If you’re a growing MSP business, you may one day suddenly realize that you need more resources in order to scale and deliver on your customer promise. If you need extra hands on deck, one option to explore is partnering with a service provider such as IT By Design, who can help you scale your MSP to a global level. If executed properly, globalization can bring your MSP many benefits, including a diverse workforce, extra resources for business continuity, and cost-efficiency.
This guest blog is courtesy of IT By Design. Read more IT By Design guest blogs here. Regularly contributed guest blogs are part of ChannelE2E’s sponsorship program.
