Building an MSP: Standardize, Standardize, Standardize
BY IT GLUE | September 28, 2017
What is the golden key to long-term success? Standardization. An efficient and productive business has eliminated as much unnecessary waste as possible. These businesses are usually the ones that reap the most profits and sustain long-term growth.
Previously in the Building an MSP series, we’ve discussed how delivering a brand promise, creating an excellent customer experience, and focusing on profits can lead to success. Now, standardizing processes is another one of the key learnings that Luis Giraldo, IT Glue’s VP Product, has learned on his journey to building a $1.2M MSP with only 2 people.
Avoid the pricing fallacy
A common mistake MSPs make is thinking they need to price low to win more business. But, letting your customers dictate your pricing means you have to deliver your service at a fixed cost. To make a profit, you’ll either have to cut margins or cut corners in your service delivery.
Instead of pricing each service separately, use all-in seat pricing. Stack the services you offer (security, cloud, managed services etc) into one monthly price. By building this into your all-in seat price, this gives you, rather than the customer, more control over your margins.
Standardize your stack
To stack your services effectively, you have to standardize. Standardizing your stack is what allows you that control over your margins and pricing. Standardization makes training new staff quicker, is easier to to document, and allows you to use lower cost resources. No matter the size of your MSP, it is much easier to create SOPs for one firewall, rather than seven.
Standardization also makes you more efficient at problem solving because it’s easier to document all your processes. And if you have more people, that makes it even more important to standardize, because it reduces the need for shoulder-tapping, and allows for the development of a documentation culture. IT Glue is the perfect documentation platform for this, allowing you to execute your services quickly, accurately, and efficiently – just what clients are looking for.
Be better, faster, AND cheaper
To be a market leader, you have to be better, faster and cheaper in comparison to everyone else. Most times, you have to pick two out of the three. However, the more you optimize your processes through standardization, the better chance you will have of achieving all three – no sacrifices needed. This is what will make you stand out and will make the biggest impact to you bottom line.
IT Glue can play a major role in getting you to that point. Learn more about how IT Glue can help you standardize your processes and increase your profitability.
IT Glue allows for efficient storage and retrieval of all the documentation you need to help your MSP run better. By integrating PSA and RMM data, we can help increase your efficiency upwards of 20%, and reducing onboarding times by even more. Eliminating wasted time from your business, IT Glue gives you more time to focus on what matters, like growing your business.
