The Managed Services business was created from the traditional suite of desktop management, backup, network and server support. Most MSPs now are offering various services outside the traditional managed infrastructure scope: application management, additional cyber security or virtual CIO services. This is the evolution of managed services, and the right way, however many MSPs have just reactively added some of these services to stay relevant to their customers and protect the core MSP services. They might call themselves "your IT department." Let's check out why it’s a problem and what to do about it.
4 min read
Debate on All In vs. Modular MSP pricing
By Denes Purnhauser on Jan 30, 2020
Topics: Business Building for IT Companies MSP Pricing NIST Cyber Security Implement New IT Services
2 min read
Start vCIO with Quick Productized Projects
By Denes Purnhauser on Mar 2, 2017
Starting vCIO services can be a struggle not just for you and your people, but for the clients too. There are some established expectations of vCIO services, which sets a hurdle right at their kickoff of these services. There is, however, a natural way of solving this problem: use easy to sell and easy to deliver productized vCIO projects.
Of course, developing such effective and elegant solutions does take time, so we’ve set up a shortcut to start, and let you build up vCIO Project products instead. Don’t worry - this isn’t taking on new work - just solve problems you’re expected to already, but start getting paid for all you do.
Let's see seven examples of typical vCIO products:
Topics: vCIO IT Management Virtual CIO IT Consultative Sales IT Account Management MSP Pricing
4 min read
My 7 Ah-ha! moments on the first MSP 2.0 boot-camp
By Denes Purnhauser on Feb 9, 2017
We just finished our first ever live 3 day Managed Service Productization boot-camp in Banff, Canada. With 25 participants we worked to crack the code in scaling up the managed services. Jam-packed with real work, the workshop groups created amazing content and generated ideas that have been sparkling. I wanted to capture some of the more intriguing ideas the MSPs came up with.
I’ll be elaborating on these topics in upcoming weeks, since I see each topic as worthy of more than a blog post, but here are the main ideas. These are my personal Ah-ha! moments.
Topics: vCIO Managed Services Providers Business Building for IT Companies IT Account Management MSP Pricing
4 min read
20% rule of vCIO pricing
By Denes Purnhauser on Jan 26, 2017
Here’s a mystery you all know all too well - pricing your stand-alone vCIO services so you’re not robbing your clients nor yourself...that trepidation when you’re putting together the proposal, or trying to ballpark a figure in a meeting. It’s always been a gamble. There’s a way to find the proper middle ground, following a simple process to help you to close more deals without risking a critical over or underestimation, of your client’s expectation or your services. Here is the formula...
We just call it a 20% rule....