Category: Better Business
Financial pitfalls: COVID-19’s domino effect
By now, we’ve all heard the term “flatten the curve,” but you might be less familiar with COVID-19’s domino effect. The domino effect refers to COVID-19’s negative impact on multiple businesses, one after the next. For instance, when one business...
Q&A: An MSP’s perspective of the evolving managed services landscape
As Global MSP Day (held on May 21st) approaches, Smarter MSP is celebrating what it means to be a managed service provider in 2020 by sitting down with your MSP peers to get their feedback on the state of the...
Give your clients a smooth transition back to work
Hopefully soon, many of us will be heading back to the office to resume what work was like pre-pandemic. While we all want to get back a sense of normalcy, for MSPs this time will be a little hectic. Just...
MSPs should prepare now for the ‘new normal’
A survey of 305 finance leaders in the U.S. published this week by PwC offers some indication as to what degree working from home is about to become the new normal in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nearly half...
A look back at the evolving trust in the MSP business model
Early MSPs were faced with a high degree of mistrust from the market. First of all, the failure of the application service provider market around the turn of the century made buyers wary of purchasing services that could disappear overnight....
Ask an MSP Expert: Caring about CARES
Q: My MSP has several clients who are unable to pay because they now have customers who aren’t paying them. I’ve thought about applying for a loan through the CARES Act. Do you think this a good idea? Before we...
How COVID-19 pandemic will change managed services utterly
The market research firm Information Services Group (ISG) is forecasting that global spending on managed services will decline 7 percent for the full 2020 year in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the current pause in spending by most...
Building customer trust
Trust is a tricky business. Creating it is a slow, delicate process, yet losing it takes only seconds, leaving customers with a sour taste and our sales margin worse for wear. Don’t take just my word for it. Last year,...
How long should my MSP contracts last?
How long should you ask your managed services clients to commit to? This is a question that I’m frequently asked by IT Solution Providers and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and my answer is always that “It depends!” The length of...
Maximizing manpower for business customers
If you’ve spoken with one of your customers lately, you’ve likely heard common difficulties they are having when managing IT resources. In particular, security teams lacking in staff and necessary skills, yet expected to drive consistent results regardless. Over the...