If you’re a reseller who’s been thinking about transitioning your company to the MSP business model, you’re certainly not alone. More and more resellers are making the switch to MSP operations, and the reasons why are compelling.
Most obvious, of course, is MSPs enjoy a consistent, predictable revenue stream from their clients. This adds a level of financial stability to your operations that is just not possible in the typical VAR business model. Simply put, the steady income that is generated by monthly billing for recurring services rendered to your clients gives you a much more solid fiscal foundation.
That foundation is key because it enables MSPs to confidently invest in growth initiatives such as new technician hires, new or expanded service offerings and the associated infrastructure to support them. These, in turn, translate into more revenue opportunities and, ultimately, greater profitability for you.
Another benefit of delivering recurring services to an MSP’s client base is the building of long-term relationships with those clients. The ongoing contact you’ll naturally have with your clients will enable you to better understand the IT and business challenges each client faces. That understanding helps you build trust and familiarity with your clients, who will then be more receptive to your advice regarding additional services that could benefit their businesses—while strengthening your bottom line.
Making the move to the MSP business model also enables you to achieve major gains in efficiency. While VARs most often deal with a hodgepodge of solutions that are favored by its clients, an MSP can standardize on one set of solutions to be used throughout its entire client base; as a result, purchasing, deploying and managing those solutions is far easier. This standardized approach will improve your clients’ uptime while reducing your support costs, and it will make it much simpler to scale out your services as your client roster expands.
Benefits of Choosing MSP-Friendly Solution Providers
Naturally, transitioning from reseller to MSP, does entail significant changes in the way you do business. For example, it can be problematic for VARs to switch from offering/supporting a wide range of solutions to standardizing on single solutions. Licensing issues are common; a VAR’s customer typically owns their software licenses, and may be reluctant to pay for MSP services while their pre-paid licenses remain in effect—this can delay moving clients to MSP services.
More daunting is the fact that a new MSP must make a substantial investment in purchasing licenses for its standardized solutions; these costs, along with those associated with training your tech team on how to deploy, configure and manage your new solutions, can impose a huge burden on your profitability while you wait for client revenues to begin coming in. Of course, any solutions you choose must demonstrate business value to your clients or those revenues may never grow!
That’s why choosing an MSP-friendly solution provider is key; they understand the challenges that MSPs must address when balancing client needs with their own business objectives. With that in mind, we specifically created the VIPRE MSP Program to help you deploy complete, full-featured managed security services that provide your clients more uptime and increased end-user productivity, all while enjoying simple billing with a stable per-user monthly fee.
VIPRE makes it easy for MSPs to protect their clients with a comprehensive, layered defense against evolving threats; offering endpoint and email security through both server- and cloud-based deployments, as well as mobile interfaces, VIPRE enables you to deliver instant threat response, anytime and anywhere.
Equally important, the VIPRE MSP Program lets you offer industry-leading protection while boosting the efficiency and profitability of your business.
Learn More
Delivering a complete portfolio of advanced security products that are purpose-built for MSPs, VIPRE is committed to helping you stay profitable, win new business, and provide stronger value to your clients. Get the complete story on the VIPRE MSP Program.
Guest blog courtesy of VIPRE Security. Read more VIPRE Security blogs here.
