Category: TruMethods Blog

Want to learn more about becoming a top managed service provider? Explore the TruMethods blog for insight into MSP training and IT solutions.

Making Security Pay

Posted on | Author Neal Bradbury

Service providers often struggle financially, even when their business is growing, because it can be challenging to achieve and maintain profitability. MSPs have seen success by adding security services to their offering to offset this challenge. However, security needs vary across customer accounts and some can be more complex than others. Ultimately, this can further perpetuate the challenge to control profitability.

For example, smaller customers who are taking advantage of a co-managed account relationship with an MSP can generate service costs above the standard subscription fee. Because they don’t have the same internal resources as their larger counterparts to handle level-one support or security issues, this places strain on the MSP’s resources.

Another reason why an MSP might find it hard to maintain profitability while delivering security services is that customers may generate unnecessary alerts or consistently reach out for levels of support they aren’t subscribed to, again draining the MSPs resources, without adding revenue.

To alleviate these challenges, it’s vital that MSPs take time to consider whether there’s a way to make each customer more profitable. This could mean charging more for security service support or leveling late payment charges, for example. Even if those efforts result in lost business, you may be better off dropping an unprofitable account if it gives you more time to drive business with more profitable customers.

Other strategies that can help MSPs make their services business more profitable include:

Thoroughly analyze each account and continuously measure profitability via quarterly benchmarking. This will help to quickly identify the problem accounts and point to some solutions (like pricing or service utilization) that could be adjusted to shift that account from the red to the black. This will also give you a better view of your performance against your goals over time. In some cases, you may cut loose accounts when appropriate. This can  affect total revenues in the short term, but will help boost the average margin.

Ensure clients are using the systems and services they are paying for. If customers don’t use every module on their plan, the unused items still create overhead for the MSP. Offer a usage analysis, which can allow the customer to drop services they do not need. That may reduce the amount they pay the MSP, but minimizing the resources required to support them could make them more profitable.

Make sure you’re not underpricing security services. While many clients are very cost-sensitive, service charges must cover your costs and provide a sustainable margin. Security provides a strong value proposition, particularly with attacks on the rise. Your offerings should be priced to reflect that. MSP’s can avoid discounting by pointing to the costs associated with not protecting your business. In the long run, the monetary costs and impact on the customer’s reputation can be far more than the cost of protecting the business in the first place.

Account for inflation. Costs have risen sharply over the past several years thanks to the pandemic, global instability, and supply chain issues. In the current economic environment, the actual service costs (including your rising overhead) need to be recalculated and reflected in pricing. Your clients are doing this right now, as well.

Implement technology that reduces your internal costs and labor. For example, a remote monitoring and management (RMM) tool that can deliver security services through a single dashboard,  allows you to monitor multiple client networks with fewer resources, reduce multiple security management requirements, and can help streamline training for new technicians. Automated alerts and first-line response tools can also make staying on top of potential threats easier to do without hiring more staff or over-extending existing teams. Partnering with vendors that have designed their technology for an MSP environment is also beneficial.

Leverage your vendor partners to outsource complex tasks. Partner with a vendor that can provide services that are resource intensive, such as a 24/7 security operations center (SOC). This can help to increase your effectiveness regarding security reliability without hiring more hard-to-find technical staff and other resources.

All of this will require MSPs to clearly understand what it costs them to provide security services. With threat levels constantly evolving, many firms are learning that paying a premium for reliable security services is worth the cost. As a result, MSPs should invest in technologies that allow them to streamline and centralize their internal operations as much as possible, while simultaneously pricing their offerings based on the value they provide. Your clients should not treat security like a low-value commodity – resourceful MSPs can use this to their advantage when it comes to pricing for profitability.

Neal Bradbury is Senior Vice President, MSP Business for Barracuda, a trusted partner and leading provider of cloud-first security solutions for managed services providers. In this role, he is responsible for driving business value for the company’s MSP partner community and alliance partners.

Why MSPs Must Welcome Change

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

At Schnizzfest this year, I spoke about the downfall of the once prosperous ice industry — a significant enterprise that failed to adapt in time and consequently vanished.

A similar fate has befallen giants like Nortel, Blockbuster and others that failed to read the tea leaves. This week, an article in the Wall Street Journal caught my attention. It discussed Intel, the once-dominant force in chip manufacturing. Due to their complacency, they allowed Nvidia to carve out a niche in graphics chips. Fast forward to the present, and Nvidia is the leading force in artificial intelligence (AI) processing.

Intel has invested billions in manufacturing facilities to function as a contract manufacturer for others but has yet to see the expected demand. Meanwhile, Nvidia has significantly surpassed Intel’s market cap.

So, what’s the takeaway?

Our market is changing. The needs of our customers are changing. Our roles within the industry are changing. We must stay aware of these shifts and avoid default responses like, “Because that’s how we’ve always done it.”

As an industry, we must embrace incremental adjustments to roles, tools, processes and pricing as we look for more significant changes on the horizon.

New Integration With Compliance Manager GRC

Posted on | Author Welcome Newscred

Make compliance risks stakeholder friendly with myITprocess!

If you are an MSP, your primary responsibility is to keep your clients’ IT environments secure. Proactively identifying compliance risks is one crucial way to achieve this. However, this is only half the battle. Getting your stakeholders’ buy-in could be even more challenging since they might not know how the compliance risks impact their day-to-day operations and overall business.

Getting your clients on board by explaining how you plan on tackling compliance risks is no small feat. Our new integration with Compliance Manage GRC could be the solution you’re looking for.

With this new integration, you can add the compliance risks automatically discovered by Compliance Manager GRC into an IT roadmap in myITprocess to get stakeholders’ buy-in on the timeline and budget.

Turn compliance risks into accepted projects

Risks identified by Compliance Manager GRC will automatically surface in myITprocess, so no compliance risks are left behind. Moreover, you can have all your technology and compliance risks together in one view.

Here is a list of these risks you can view in a unified view:

  • VulScan issues — Network vulnerabilities
  • Technical issues — Password weaknesses, anti-spyware not installed
  • Requirement issues — HIPAA, network operations and monitoring, threat identification
  • Controls issues — Access permission management, identity management, HR cybersecurity management

You can easily add the risks that surfaced from Compliance Manager GRC into a myITprocess roadmap to get stakeholders’ buy-in on the proposed timeline and budget on all compliance issues. You can present the IT roadmap in an interactive, easy-to-consume presentation to easily capture their decisions and hold the clients accountable. You can also automatically summarize decisions made during QBRs on compliance risks in an automated post-meeting report and easily reference this to see progress.

Complete visibility of risks with myITprocess standards library

By supplementing compliance assessments with other standards in myITprocess, you can automatically bring the risks found in Compliance Manager GRC and have a holistic IT discussion with your stakeholders by utilizing the out-of-the-box myITprocess standards library.

This will help you access the following areas:

  • Hardware issues
  • Software updates/upgrades
  • Server infrastructure
  • Licensing information
  • Environmental concerns
  • Fire suppression
  • Air conditioning
  • Data backup
  • Core infrastructure

During QBRs, you can holistically present all identified risks that are tied to stakeholders’ strategic business initiatives to get their buy-in.

Visit our Knowledge Base for more details and step-by-step instructions on how to set up the Compliance Manager GRC integration.

Interested to learn more?

Adapting Your MSP Culture to the Hybrid Work Environment

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

MSPs have varied opinions on the impact of hybrid work environments on productivity and culture. While many MSPs have embraced the way of working in the new world and adapted their cultures to it, others continue to struggle.

There are a few things I’ve picked up from speaking with successful MSPs working in hybrid work environments. First, they’re very deliberate in their communications and with meeting rhythms at every level. Missing a weekly one-on-one with a team member is no longer an option for a manager or leader. Unlike when managers and leaders were in the office, skipping a meeting with an employee is now considered a huge deal and can negatively impact an MSP’s workplace culture.

These MSPs also have more accountability and visibility into metrics for each role. Every team member understands the tasks and metrics for which their role is accountable, and there needs to be reporting in place.

Additionally, there’s another consideration — the customer relationship and how having many customers in a hybrid environment affects the relationship with the customer. Face-to-face communication is powerful; it’s critical to relationships and meaningful to us as humans. MSPs are working harder today than ever to have face-to-face time with customers. Are you facing the same challenge? If so, have you made changes to your delivery to consider this with your customer relationships?

In your team and customer relationships, ensure you are adapting to the world around you. 

What Does Your Customer Base Say About Your MSP?

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

When assessing managed service providers (MSPs), you frequently hear the term “operational maturity” in our industry. In other words, how mature an MSP’s operations are. However, when I evaluate an MSP, I first look at its “customer base maturity.”

Here’s what you have to remember: All revenue dollars are not created equally.

Each quarter, you should be reviewing your customer base. Drawing near-fit customers behind you as you grow is why you’re not growing as quickly as you’d like. I’ve always looked closely at this, but I have a different view today than a few years ago because, in the past, the only tool we had in our holster to fix it was to sell to new customers at the right price and then replace them at the bottom. Today, we have a lot of tools that can impact the quality of our customer base.

So, what does quality mean? It means the average MRR and the percentage of customers above your minimum target, your all-in seat price, customer concentration, reactive tickets per seat, how much they utilize your stack and more.

You can categorize your customers and, each quarter, try to make some progress. This means getting all your customers on your latest offering price, adding new services and proposing projects that help with alignment.

The truth is this: Your customer base says more about your MSP than any other indicator.

So, what does your customer base say about your business?

Navigating Through the Haze: Finding Your Way to Clarity and Purpose

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

At Schnizzfest earlier in the year, I spoke about self-awareness, how difficult it is for us to be self-aware and how much it impacts our lives. We all see this play out in our relationships, and I see it from TruMethods members regarding what holds them back from fulfilling their true potential.

You can lead a happy and fulfilling life without maximizing your capabilities. The issue is when you want or need your business or career to be different. In other words, you’re capable but not seeing results.

A thing stands between you and what you can accomplish — and I call it “the haze.” Essentially, you’re trying to see yourself, your role or your business performing differently, but the route to get there is viewed through a haze created by your self-image.

We, as human beings, find comfort in the haze. It makes our world smaller and safer and allows us to continue seeing the world the way we want. For example, when we’re in the haze, we don’t have to try new things that may fail. We also avoid having that hard conversation with a long-term employee that the business may have outgrown. We create this haze to keep ourselves safe — but it mainly prevents us from growing.

One of the main reasons why we have peer groups is to help one another see through the haze. The most rewarding thing for me is to see the haze lift and watch people begin to feel the thrill of fulfilling their potential and helping others do the same.

The moral of this story is that when someone tells you something or challenges you on a decision or a closely held belief, don’t dismiss it as “I know better.”

Consider everything. Ask yourself, “Is this my haze?”

The Dangers of Perfectionism: When Striving for Perfection Becomes the Enemy of Good

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Perfectionism can be the enemy of good. While tempting, it’s an unattainable ideal that can lead to disappointment and frustration, hinder progress and prevent experimentation. It demands flawless execution without room for error or deviation from expectations. However, there’s another way to look at things — by accepting that imperfection is a natural part of any process, you can achieve greater adaptability, resilience and growth in your business. 

Too often, people try to figure something out completely before taking action — but you can’t figure out most things on a whiteboard or spreadsheet. Instead, it’s best to have a framework for what you want to accomplish and ask, “What is the minimum amount of resources we can employ to implement something so that we can get real-world feedback?” In other words, don’t shoot an ant with an elephant gun. 

The most straightforward answer is always the best one. Avoid over-engineering solutions and processes with more planning. (Ever heard of paralysis by analysis?) Your first version of something is almost good enough, so go with it. 

The MSP business is changing quickly. We’re rolling out new services, using different go-to-market strategies, and changing how we deliver value daily to our customers. This means that processes, teams and reporting are also evolving. We can only keep up by simplifying how we do business. 

Some ways to do that include: 

  • Looking at your quarterly action plan and asking yourself, “Is there a simpler way or route to action?”
  • Asking your team leads to simplify the processes in your delivery areas. 
  • Standardizing workflows to ensure consistency.  

Simplicity is the key to unlocking greater productivity, creativity and success in the MSP business landscape. By embracing simplicity and avoiding the dangers of perfectionism, teams can increase clarity, reduce friction and communicate more effectively toward shared goals. 

The Power of Changing Beliefs: How It Makes You Wiser

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

I have a decision I’m considering. It’s a money decision. As I was thinking it through, it gave me an interesting perspective.

I have spoken to a few people close to me about this decision to get other perspectives. I made a spreadsheet to ensure I saw the decision clearly and realized I had strong feelings about how and why to make this decision.

I stopped for a second and asked myself, “Why do I feel this way?” It made me think about my relationship with money and my beliefs surrounding money decisions. I looked again at the spreadsheet and thought, “This is a math problem. So why do I have such strong feelings?”

It was a great exercise to learn about myself. I realized I had developed many of my beliefs, like most of us, long ago when my situation and priorities differed. So why am I holding on to them? It’s because it’s easy to stay the same and hard to change.

My takeaway is that many closely held beliefs that served us well at one point in our lives may hold us back at some future point. This doesn’t mean your values have changed, but how you view your careers, relationships, money, success, friendship and priorities can all change and, frankly, should change.

When deciding or reacting to someone or something, I look for opportunities to ask myself why I feel a certain way. If you journal, this can really help. I talked about this at Schnizzfest since it relates to self-awareness — journaling how you feel about situations versus a diary of what happened.

I hope this is what becoming wiser looks like, but only time will tell. 

Inside Sales: 3 Things to Know Before Getting Started

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

The more your MSP business grows and increases its qualified leads, the more important it is to have someone dedicated to inside sales.

Think about when would be the best time to hire an inside salesperson for your MSP, and then think about what type of person would be best suited for that role. Remember, combining inside and outside sales is not the answer to your sales problems.

Here are a few things to consider about inside sales before getting started.

Do you need inside sales?

It depends on where you are as a company. If you’re a small company with limited resources, you may want to start with maximizing your warm lead sources first to see how that goes. Another question you should ask yourself is, “Can I manage my database without inside sales?” If so, you may not be at the point where hiring an inside salesperson makes sense. However, you will want to add inside sales to your business over time. For instance, once you turn up the dial on your marketing efforts, an inside sales team will be necessary to follow up on the influx of leads you receive. 

Hire the right people   

Success becomes a lot easier with the right people. Who you hire for your inside sales team is as crucial as your inside sales process — experience in inside sales matters. Call reluctance is the number one obstacle. If you can find someone ready to pick up the phone and call, you will be successful. Something else to consider when hiring inside salespeople is whether the individual you are interviewing for inside sales is auditioning for outside sales instead. While they are both sales positions, they require different skill sets. Finally, put the inside sales candidate on the phone to review performance. Is the person comfortable? Are there any red flags? Can the candidate handle rejection? Does this individual have a positive attitude? Use your best judgment when monitoring the candidate’s calls.

Combining inside and outside sales is not a solution  

Your inside salesperson should be trying to set up meetings between you and prospects to discuss how to look at technology differently. Avoid hiring a salesperson to do both inside and outside sales. Usually, a business owner will hire an inside salesperson first. Once that person understands the process and has a functioning sales engine, the owner hires an outside salesperson. When you hire an outside salesperson without any leads, there’s time in the day for that person to make calls — but that doesn’t last very long. I have not seen someone succeed in both roles in the long term.

Getting started with inside sales can be intimidating. However, once you get going, you will reap the rewards. You may not necessarily see the results you are looking for right away since many of your leads are probably cold if you start from scratch, but with time, the number of quality leads will increase.

Unlock Your Leadership Potential With Self-Awareness

Posted on | Author Gary Pica

Are you self-aware? If you’re like most people, you’re nodding your head. Of course, you are! You know yourself inside and out. You probably wish the people around you were more like you — self-aware. However, I bet you didn’t know the following statistic: Studies suggest that only 10-15% of people are actually self-aware. Now, I’ll ask you again: Are you self-aware? 

First of all, what’s self-awareness? Well, there are several components to it. Simply put, self-awareness is recognizing and understanding your emotions, thoughts and behaviors. However, it also has a social aspect — understanding how others perceive you.  

Without a doubt, self-awareness is critical in our personal and professional lives. It can help us make better decisions, develop more fulfilling relationships and enhance our job performance. However, why do so many of us mistakenly believe we are self-aware when we’re not? 

One reason is our natural tendency to overestimate our abilities. Ever lose a prospect after thinking you would be sending over an agreement? (We’ve all been there, haven’t we?) This same bias leads us to believe we know ourselves better than we actually do. 

How can you become authentically self-aware?

It all starts with being genuinely curious. Be open to learning more about yourself, your character, your strengths and your weaknesses. It’s okay to be vulnerable. Pay close attention to what motivates you, what your triggers are and what you can do to control your emotions better. Then I want you to write down what you discover.  

Journaling is necessary to become more self-aware. But not just any journaling, mind you. Write about your feelings, not just what you did or what happened throughout your day. Journaling about your emotions will help you identify patterns in your behavior and give you an insight into how you tend to react in certain situations. 

Finally, schedule some time to read every day. Read books, articles and blogs that provide insights into human behavior, self-improvement and personal growth. Investing time in these areas will give you the knowledge and tools to become more self-aware. I’d even encourage you to read about topics you usually wouldn’t, to mix things up. 

If you want to improve your self-awareness, it’s time to get curious, journal everything and read more. And remember this: While only a tiny percentage of people are genuinely self-aware, that doesn’t mean you can’t be one of them. You must put in the work if you want to be more self-aware. It’s as simple as that.