Leveraging Network Assessment To Increase Revenues

By Mark Winter, Vice President, RapidFire Tools, Inc.

Lucrative managed service agreements are the Holy Grail for solution providers, generating incremental recurring revenue. When multiplied over many clients, these services can swiftly add up to sizable, predictable monthly incomes. As many successful managed services providers (MSPs) have already experienced, such services can be delivered through a remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, where technicians can manage the end-customers’ networks from a single workstation at the VAR’s location, without so much as a field visit.

Yet there is still a percentage of the market that has not yet made a transition away from the more traditional break-fix or equipment-based reseller model. Meanwhile, hardware continues down the road toward commoditization, and hosted services are gaining mainstream acceptance due to established cloud platforms from mammoth market players like Google and Microsoft.  As these factors emerge, more VARs are looking to adopt a managed services business model.

The question for this VAR profile is, then:  What’s the easiest way to migrate toward a service-focused, MSP model?  One proven method is to deliver network assessment services, used as both a prospecting tool and as part of your ongoing, fee-based services. For that matter, regular network assessments can make your end-customers less vulnerable to an interloping competitor.  Here are five guidelines to ease the transition to an MSP-based model...

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