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BillR
09-23-2008, 03:39 PM
I am curious to see if anyone here is involved with a managed services company. This is going to be one component of my service offerings for my new company.

My offering will be pretty focused and not target everything under the sun. I'd love to hear more about anyone else doing this however.

orion_joel
09-24-2008, 12:35 AM
This is something that i would really like to be offering to more clients. While it is something that you should not over charge for as this will quickly bring you undone. It means that you can charge a small premium on top of a regular fee. Or even better charge a minimum fee per month to manage the services that you offer. Which puts you in a good place to better estimate at least your minimum time needs, and minimum expected turnover.

I think that the key to making this sort of thing work is the billing process and procedures. Clients (or at least mine) love to know where they stand, and having a known monthly cost, and knowing what that gets them is a bonus for them. The one thing that i find is making the client fully aware of what is and is not included makes it a lot easier when the billing starts to get different with different services.

BillR
09-24-2008, 10:23 AM
That is all interesting. I agree on all counts.

What I really like about managed services is the ability to upsell.

LJLynch
09-26-2008, 10:21 AM
There are a number of groups that provide information about managed services. In addtion, company's that provide tools for managed services generally provide some materials to help you get started. Neither one of you provided any information about how you intend to deliver your service, so it is hard to know what information to provide here.

Certainly, check out mspmentor.net (http://www.mspmentor.net)if you haven't already. CompTIA also has a focus on msp (http://www.focusonmsp.com)site that has much information.

If you are really fishing for comments from end users, then I would frame the question this way - "Does anyone have experience dealing with a technology services company under a monthly maintenance plan that provides services for a fixed monthly fee?" Managed services is our industry term and I never use it when going to my clients and prospects.

orion_joel
09-27-2008, 01:22 AM
Linda, that is a great response, in reality i am not really fishing, primarily due to average user on this forum being well out of my target market. I am located in Australia, the vast majority of other members are located outside Australia. Not to say comments would not be helpful from my point of view.

However in reality while it is a service i would like to provide, i have had little if any great interest in this service. By far the majority of companies within the target area that i work on are mostly outside the target market for this type of service. Once i have gained a sufficient revenue base to mean i do not need to work on anything but my business, (as i currently work a full time job at night as well as my business). It is a service i will spend a lot more time looking at providing.

I do agree on the upsell potential of this type of service Bill. Often the type of companies that i see using this type of service are the ones that have distributed operating locations with a central head office, but not a sufficient sized location that they can afford in house IT support, as such often there is a good product range that you can become a local supplier for in area's such as consumables and day to day IT product's that it may be inefficient for them to purchase centrally for a site level. If that makes sense.

LJLynch
09-27-2008, 02:51 PM
Not sure what you mean by saying we are out of your target market. Geographically - obviously we are. And since I just joined this week, I don't really know who the members are and so far, I keep running across the same people in every post!

But, I would think that if there are business owners out here in other vertical markets, they could give you input from their perspective.

We offer the KI Total Technology Protection Plan. We have 12 clients on it right now and hope to add several more by the end of the year. Our clients are in a variety of markets. This type of plan makes sense to any business owner that depends on technology to run their business.

If this is a business you are just starting and you don't have any tools yet, I'd be happy to give you names of companies that provide tools and ways that I think you can get started without giving away the farm. Certainly many of us have overanalyzed MS and not started as quickly as we should have. There are also many who have jumped out of the gate and then tried to figure out how to deliver. Both are not as smart as you could be.