The days of traditional resellers are over, and MSPs need to go learn and mean to survive, says ASD<\/em><\/p>\n Value Added Distributor Africa Solution Distributor (ASD) has been growing networks of Value Added Resellers and \u2013 more recently \u2013 Managed Service Providers across the African continent for 15 years. Much has changed in that time, and the 2020s are set to put a great deal more pressure on VARs and MSPs, says ASD MD Hennie Moolman.<\/p>\n \u201cWith a background on the reseller side, we launched as a master distributor in 2005, helping resellers to grow. Initially, we had a team of five or six staff focused on supporting resellers in the Pretoria area. But we evolved with changes in the market, and now we have a resellers across 23 countries in Africa,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The company evolved its solutions suite too \u2013 starting with traditional mainframes, then moving to Windows solutions, and now distributes a portfolio of solutions including network and infrastructure monitoring, remote management, asset inventory management, automation and backup and recovery tools.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the key things we do now is to help evolve resellers into MSPs,\u201d says Moolman. \u201cThere is just no place in the market anymore for a traditional \u2018break and fix\u2019 reseller who starts every month on zero revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n Times have changed, he notes, and only VARs and MSPs who can assure recurring, compound revenue will be able to thrive in future. \u201cThe market is competitive, and end customers are very demanding about getting more comprehensive SLAs for the lowest possible price. You might only have a customer for a year or two, and if you can\u2019t keep bringing in new customers, and delivering service excellence at a very competitive price, you won\u2019t be able to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n Becoming an MSP demands significant changes within a reseller, he notes. Not only must sales, finance and marketing models change, but the entire internal operational structure has to change to support more efficient customer support.<\/p>\n \u201cMSPs have to become lean and mean \u2013 improving efficiencies and getting a better understanding of the true value of each customer,\u201d Moolman says. This can be challenging for many MSPs, which have grown from traditional reseller roots and may have retained their traditional systems for customer management, support and billing.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one of the biggest issues for many MSPs \u2013 they may have multiple solutions and applications for managing the same customers, so internally, they are not all on the same page and they cannot assess the operational costs for servicing the customer, or the value of the customer. They can take weeks to consolidate everything every month for billing purposes, and they may, in fact, be allocating too many resources to service a customer.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cVery few MSPs know what the true value of customers is. They get invoices from a range of different suppliers, then they have to try to consolidate this data and determine how much it costs to service customers in order to invoice them. You have to be extremely well organised internally, with everything in one place, to determine your operational costs very accurately, right down to the cost per user.\u201d<\/p>\n Moolman says this lack of transparency is a major stumbling block in a highly competitive environment. \u201cElsewhere in the world, there is a growing trend to vet customers to see if they are actually worth retaining, but in South Africa and across Africa, we tend to onboard all the customers we can, without proper oversight of the cost of servicing them.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, MSPs have to cut their operational costs to deliver on demands for more services at a lower cost. Consolidation and advanced automation are key to managing services with fewer resources, Moolman says.<\/p>\n ASD focuses heavily on supporting evolution among resellers, VARs and MSPs, and offers training on challenges they typically face, from how to price and sell managed services through to building a resilient business and training sales staff on solution selling.<\/p>\n Business resilience in this market depends on careful focus on viable markets and highly efficient operations. \u201cIf you have SLAs to manage the customer\u2019s key infrastructure and network, it\u2019s a lot harder for the customer to replace you than if you\u2019re just dropping boxes,\u201d Moolman notes. Using automation to improve efficiency helps reduce the costs of delivering services, and thanks to cloud-based platforms, expertise can now be pulled in from anywhere in the world, and manage customer infrastructure remotely, Moolman adds.<\/p>\n On top of improved operational models, sales and marketing are key to success: \u201cTo become a successful MSP, you have to take on the role of a trusted advisor. It\u2019s not so much about what technology you\u2019re offering, but whether you can provide the right solution to a pain point, at the right price,\u201d says Moolman. \u201cAnd your sales teams have to support this by moving from selling products to selling solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n ASD sees scope for ongoing growth across Africa into the2020s, on the back of evolved MSPs with improved operational models. \u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s a major growth in the number of end-users, so MSPs seriously need to go leaner and broaden their services and solutions. And ASD is enabling that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Hennie Moolman, CEO of Africa Solution Distributor Boosting fit-for-future MSPs across Africa The days of traditional resellers are over, and MSPs need to go learn and mean to survive, says ASD Value Added Distributor Africa Solution Distributor (ASD) has been growing networks of Value Added Resellers and \u2013 more recently \u2013 Managed Service Providers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6753,"featured_media":23719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[197],"tags":[183,198],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6753"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23708,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23706\/revisions\/23708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asdafrica.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Getting lean and mean
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\nGrowing into the 2020s<\/strong><\/h3>\n