Guarantee a Managed Services Win

Just prior to Super Bowl III, Joe Namath famously guaranteed “we’re gonna win the game, I guarantee it,” in response to taunts from a particularly loud Colt’s fan.  Johnny Sample, the Jets defensive captain, reflecting on Joe’s rash promise said “…we all thought we'd win the game. We had studied film on the Colts and we were really confident. But to make a guarantee?” The rest of the story is history; under enormous pressure, Joe Namath delivered on his promise and brought both the AFL and the Jets their first super bowl victory. Behind Joe’s bold prediction was a quiet confidence in his team and their game plan. 

Coach Bear Bryant, with 323 victories, 6 national championships and 13 conference titles under his belt, summed up his recipe for success this way… "I'm no innovator. If anything I'm a stealer, or borrower. I've stolen or borrowed from more people than you can shake a stick at." Behind Bryant’s philosophy was a realization that adopting the things that worked well for others, rather than originality, is a sound approach to winning football games.

When it comes to delivering managed services, a well devised game plan built on the success of others is key in guaranteeing a win. With this in mind, CompTIA developed a number of managed services templates, patterned after industry best practices, to help MSPs effectively conquer their competition. These comprehensive best practices outlines help you develop and improve many components of your practice, including:

CompTIA Managed Services Agreement – This is a readymade customizable template for creating an SLA (Service Level Agreement) for providing a managed service such as SaaS/cloud computing, data management, website development or hosting, or network monitoring. The CompTIA Managed Services Agreement has three parts: Exhibit A includes the general terms and conditions of the agreement; Exhibit B specifies the details of the service to be provided and acceptance testing; and Exhibit C is a Service Level Agreement which outlines the benchmarks of services to be provided, response times if the service fails, and remedies or penalties for not meeting the stipulations of the contract.

Client On-Boarding Template – This model provides a detailed list of best practice activities for on-boarding new clients to an on-premise managed services environment. It’s intended to assist solution providers that are adding managed services to their portfolio and is appropriate for those in the formative stages of implementing an MSP practice. The activities are representative of those employed by managed services providers with an on-premise management and monitoring solution, including remote access and  applications such as backup and recovery, disaster recovery and network management. The template is based primarily on the activities required when on boarding a client to one of those solutions.

MSP Pricing Model Considerations – This template is intended to provide new MSP solution providers with an understanding of the pricing model alternatives that they need to consider as they build their practice. Pricing MSP solutions can be very different from how solution providers priced their traditional product and service offerings. Simply adding desired gross margin uplift to either a product or service cost typically does not work in an MSP model. Value-based pricing is a better approach and will provide a larger margin opportunity for providers, as well as a greater value proposition for their customers.

Best Practices for Customer Offerings – This template includes a list of the most common offerings currently being deployed by managed service practices. The list is based on the input of experienced IPED consultants, research conducted with numerous channel partners and interviews with partners that have successfully built an MSP practice. Although the customer offerings vary between MSPs, most of the successful solution providers have started their practice with one or more of the services described in this template.

So take inspiration from Joe Namath and the confidence he had in his game plan, as well as Bear Bryant’s willingness to borrow from the success of others. Incorporate the lessons they provided and guarantee your own managed services win!