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Starting a new Relationship on the Right Foot
On Friday, February 20, 2009
by Lane Smith
We are almost done with the second month of 2009... and while the economy continues to disintegrate around us MSPs seem to be fairing pretty well. I have seen many articles in the past couple of weeks that state that the managed services market is continuing to grow. Much of this is driven by the fact that MSPs can provide services for a customer at a fraction of the cost as compared to handling them in-house. This of course means that many more resellers will be offering managed services in the near futureand we will need to continue to "up our game" in order to remain competitive.
Last month I mentioned an article I read that offered three suggestions for customers looking to outsource, they were; 1. Research the vendor, 2. Get a solid contract and 3. Keep tabs on the vendor. I discussed the first topic last month and wanted to focus on the second topic today as I believe the "On Boarding Process" can be a key differentiator from our competition.
Once you have a signed proposal, your next step is to get a signed contract. This can be a very tedious task and often leads to frustration on both sides. I have a few suggestions to help ease this part of your on boarding process. First off (aside from the legal aspects) the real purpose of a contract and service level agreement are to set expectations. This is where you are going to outline for the customer exactly what you will be providing. Without spending time here your customer will never be fully satisfied with your services as their expectations may never match your delivery. Secondly, make sure that you have a flexible contract that can be changed easily and on a regular basis (quarterly) if need be. This really helps speed the process along as many companies are wary of a long term commitment that has a price that is set in stone. Lastly,make sure that the SLA is written in "plain English" and clearly outlines what services you are providing and how you will be providing them. I encourage you to take a look at the agreement and SLA template that we published last month. This template takes all of these suggestions into consideration and should make this process a bit easier for you.
Once you have a contract signed the real work begins. Our customer "On Boarding Process" will be outlined in depth during our webinar on March 17th so I won't spend too much time on this today. A successful customer launch is critical to creating a long term relationship with your managed services customers - if you mess this up keeping the customer past the 90 day mark may be very difficult. Our process focuses on three areas - documentation, process alignment and communication. When you look at the documentation deliverable, the key is to document what you need to properly support the customer and nothing more. You can come back later and build the in-depth diagrams and detailed server configuration files, but to get started you need to make sure you and your team have a solid understanding of their environment. Process alignment is a key differentiator from much of the competition. This is where you take a look at their current IT processes (generally not documented) and adjust / align your process to match their requirements. Finally, communicationis critical. We recommend that you schedule a "lunch and learn" to introduce the services to the customers employees. Much like the contract phase, setting expectations is very important and it is equally important to market the services so that the employees actually use them. The last thing you want is to look back after 90 days and see that the customer's employees are not using the services. You will find templates for the "lunch and learn" handouts and presentation in our partner portal.
Once again,the key point here is that communication is critical to the success of the relationship - whether in the sales cycle or with the On BoardingProcess. With that I will leave you to review the rest of our newsletter, I think that you will find many areas that we continue to improve our services in our efforts to keep you as competitive as possible.
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