IPED recently completed a study of 200 technology solution providers and found five factors considered to be top business differentiators. The results of that survey are below:
Managed Services Differentiators:
% of respondents selecting given criteria as a priority; sorted by Best-In-Class responses
While respondents agree on the top five differentiators, there is no consensus on their order of importance. To quote the author, “Best-in-Class MSPs point to exceptional technical support as their most important business differentiator, followed by the ability to establish a trusted advisor relationship with their customers.” The article continues on with the fifth differentiator which is illustrated in the chart above, “The opinion gap was also significant when it came to the perceived importance of the differentiating value of maintaining many vendor/partner relationships.” The article continues by discussing the possible over reliance average MSPs put on relationship differentiators as opposed to developing exceptional technical support.
Personally, I find it more interesting to compare the best in class priorities between operation process and relationship differentiators. ‘Exceptional technical support’ and ‘Fast turnaround and delivery’ are processes that can be documented, improved, and as is the nature of processes, are scalable. The relationship differentiators (trusted advisors and many vendor/partners) are clearly important, but are not easily repeatable or scalable to implement across an organization. This is why successful individual sales reps get the big bucks, but I digress…
Both relationships and operation process are important factors for an MSP. Each needs to be in place, but which one gets more attention from management? It seems to me that you can hire rainmakers to foster relationships and work with them consistently to reach sales targets. If successful, the return is higher sales and revenue for that period. A one–to-one return on your effort (ROI). Or you can take the effort to assemble best-in-class operational processes that, once in place, will pay dividends terms of cost savings every time the process is utilized. A one-to-many return on your effort.
Check out the full two page article at the link below: http://www.comptia.org/documents/MDOC_STORAGE/Nov%20Quick%20Facts%20Article.pdf
