Managed services providers (MSPs) juggle a lot of responsibilities. They have to address rapidly changing customer demands while still providing high-quality service, managing increasingly complex environments, evolving their service offerings, and much moreyou’re your business scales, it’s hard to accomplish these goals without the help of professional services automation (PSA) software.

As managed services provider (MSP) technicians know, remote access gives an authorized user the ability to enter another user’s computer or network through a network connection. This access is often established via a remote desktop protocol (RDP), which is a network communications protocol from Microsoft® that is specifically designed for remote management.

John Pagliuca, CEO of N-able, has taken issue in the press multiple times with the term digital transformation, preferring the term digital evolution. I agree that evolution is a better term. Digital transformation implies a one-time event; digital evolution acknowledges the ongoing nature of these changes. In short, the market will continue to change. How you adapt dictates whether you come out far ahead or remain with the status quo.

IT is not a technology cost, it’s a human resource cost! This is a fundamental concept MSPs need to keep in mind when they are looking at their businesses, but one many smaller MSPs tend to overlook. Think about it; for every business you’re supporting as an MSP, you’re doing so to ensure their IT infrastructure has stability of operation and is optimized to maximize staff productivity.

From my previous blog, I’m going to continue the list of five things you can do to improve your technical service delivery to your customers (if you didn’t read the last post, you can catch up on what you missed here (link)). In the following three points, I focus on the role automation can play.

If you attended our recent virtual Empower event you may have seen the extensive session on mergers and acquisitions. We’ve witnessed a large amount of M&A activity within the MSP space over the past few years as a result of the managed services business model becoming attractive for private equity investment. According to 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, M&A activity was at an all-time low in 2020, except within the technology sector.

Many managed services providers (MSPs) depend on word-of-mouth referrals to generate new customers and grow their business. And while relying on these can work to a degree—especially if your company provides outstanding customer service—it isn’t an ideal strategy if you want to really scale or grow. There are several serious downsides to relying solely on these types of referrals.

In around 2003 I worked as a level one tech for a very large customer contact center (1,500 call center agents) for a major American hardware vendor. This was around the height of adware and other greyware hitting Windows XP.