The ongoing global pandemic COVID-19, with its far-reaching consequences, has turned the world upside down and impacted both — health and work. In some industries, the effects have been far prominent than others. One such impact has been on the cloud industry, where MSPs and their customers have adopted new working practices. So, amid these challenging circumstances, what are the key takeaways for MSPs to ensure growth and customer retention?
According to the 2020 MSP Salary Survey conducted annually by Credentialing Resource Center, 70% of MSPs were planning to return to their work after the pandemic died down. However, the pandemic doesn’t appear to be slowing down. A recent Datto survey that we explored earlier in an article here stated that more than 1,800 MSPs worldwide adjusted their growth graph downward to survive the attack and explore new opportunities.
However, a silver lining has been MSPs’ expectations of rise in revenues due to the demand for remote working. MSPs can play a vital role in helping businesses maintain their workloads. Multiple companies had already adopted cloud services that gave them a better chance of surviving the pandemic, but some were reluctant toward change and had to bear the brunt. One of the biggest problems the MSPs faced was managing the clients’ business with a distributed workforce. Businesses had to spend more on the cybersecurity training front for a safer infrastructure, and MSPs focused on it as an opportunity to deliver value and add a revenue stream.
Another hurdle for both businesses and MSPs was the increasing security violations. According to the Datto report, the number of ransomware attacks, along with other attacks, had increased. With the combination of remote working and businesses migrating to the cloud, vulnerabilities have increased. Hence, MSPs have invested a huge amount of time and effort to ensure that companies do not face business-threatening breaches. An important lesson for MSPs here is that they need to focus on providing robust security measures and phishing protection to ensure the safety of their clients.
The ability to come up with innovative ideas has become an essential trait for MSP that want to establish long-term relations with their clients. The organizations that relied on on-premise servers more than cloud services have faced multiple challenges as server maintenance at various locations has become a major challenge amid travel restrictions due to COVID. Hence, MSPs need to adapt according to customer’s needs along with following a proactive approach toward these changes. MSPs already using remote tools to support their clients were already at an advantage over others. Further, MSPs also need to understand their client’s needs and provide lasting solutions that can stand the test of tough conditions.
With all this in mind, one can safely make a calculated assertion regarding the course of action for businesses and MSPs. The first course of action should be focusing on educating the clients and employees on security awareness to tackle the security-related problems of their organization. Long-term solutions instead of short term are also important in getting over the pandemic induced environment.
Businesses also need to choose MSPs with impeccable goodwill that provide their users with flexibility and trust. An established and trusted MSP will be able to tackle new challenges head-on, whether they are new problem resolution via innovative solutions or tackling cyber-attacks. Lastly, striking the right partnerships and adopting the right tools is also going to be very important for MSPs.
At Centilytics, we hope to empower MSPs with our innovative solutions so that they can tackle challenges head-on in these uncertain times. Centilytics — an intelligent cloud management platform — has its own partner programs for MSPs that aims to boost their customer retention and open new revenue streams. Click here to get a free trial of our partner program today!