The Most Significant Changes 20 MSPs Made To Their Business In 2020
We asked MSPs on this year’s Managed Service Provider 500 list to describe the biggest, most significant changes their companies made in 2020 to drive success. Here’s what some of them had to say.
Success Factors
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 was a year of upheaval for the IT industry and the IT channel. And that certainly includes MSPs who, in addition to having to adjust their own business operations to account for the changed conditions, saw increased demand for their managed communications, collaboration and security services from millions of workers suddenly confined to their homes.
As part of the 2021 MSP 500 project, CRN asked managed service providers to describe the biggest, most significant changes their companies made in the past year to drive their success.
Many responded with details about changes they made in direct response to the pandemic. Others cited changes that were already in the works but accelerated because of the shifting business conditions. And others described changes to their companies that were completely unrelated to the pandemic.
Here’s a sampling of the responses that MSPs provided. Some have been edited for clarity.
ASK
Michael Maddox
President and CEO
In the past year, ASK’s implementation of the Entrepreneurial Operating System has led to increased efficiency, internal alignment and customer engagement. The MSP also has been able to better track KPIs and metrics, which has improved its ability to see areas of the company’s business that need more attention.
Axia Technology Partners
Roger Veach
President, CEO
The Axia Technology Partners team acquired two companies in order to expand its available in-house services for its customer base. These acquisitions have brought both an internal team focused on custom software development and the MSP’s own unified communications with accompanying development team to manage.
By bringing these resources in-house, the company is able to service its customers better by providing a UCaaS platform and custom software services, which the company has full control in operating.
Broadview Networks
Michael Orloff
President
This past year [the focus was on] investing in employees, their equipment, workspace and wellness. The MSP offered internal training around stress management, offered in-house wellness seminars, and introduced an Employee and Family Assistance Program. This helped overcome much of the stress and anxiety experienced during the pandemic.
From a customer-support perspective the company hired additional help desk staff and focused primarily on support responsiveness and SLAs. Customers were going through their own pandemic pain and the MSP did not want to add to it.
Calligo
Julian Box
CEO
Calligo rebranded and repositioned the business to be a managed data services provider, rather than a typical MSP. The company wants to be seen as offering more value than standard MSPs who simply maintain technology. The company’s portfolio of managed privacy services, managed IT, cloud and security services, and managed data insights services are spread across the entire data life cycle, bringing data safety and greater productivity and profitability with every data interaction. This transformation in the third quarter led to a quadrupling of the company’s pipeline in the fourth quarter.
Computer Design & Integration
Eric Bakker
CEO
Computer Design & Integration’s recent acquisitions have had the biggest impact on the company’s success. The MSP also launched new and differentiated managed services offerings around ServiceNow and a full security group called CDI Managed Security Solutions, which marries its strength in infrastructure, DevOps and digital transformation with security and compliance. This integrated approach allows the company to better align with customer needs and deliver modern, thought-leading solutions that protect customers from cyberattacks.
ConRes
Mary Nardella
CEO
ConRes has invested in additional head count and toolsets to support customers in the MSP’s six key solution areas: cloud, collaboration, cybersecurity, data center, digital infrastructure and DevOps.
Ensono
Jeff VonDeylen
CEO
In addition to changes in response to the pandemic, the single biggest change Ensono made was a change in how the MSP prioritizes work across the company. The company developed and rolled out a new “rhythm of the business” practice to ensure that the most important strategies and needs of the company are measured, inspected and prioritized in a heightened way. This is because the practices of old are no longer good enough to accomplish the company’s goals: Client needs for rapid response and action, the speed of business and the speed of change have accelerated, and a new cadence of ”tomorrow” vs. ”next week” is needed.
Envision Technology Advisors
Todd Knapp
Founder, CEO
Prior to the pandemic, Envision Technology Advisors had already embraced the idea that its employees should have the ability to work from anywhere. The restrictions imposed by COVID-19 simply reinforced what the MSP had already put in place, that employees should have secure access to all the same files, tools and resources as they have in a traditional office setting.
While the pandemic was not the catalyst for the implementation of technologies to support a distributed workforce, the pandemic allowed the company to lean into this idea even further. The company continues to strive to become a model for what a modern workplace could look like from a security, communication, collaboration and cultural perspective.
enVista
Paul Wolf
VP, Digital Solutions
The most significant change that enVista made in the past year to drive success was bringing in new leadership to represent sales, strategy, solution architecture, delivery and operations. The leadership team was put together strategically to have deep domain experience in each area of the business and scale the business for continued growth in 2021.
Expedient Technology Solutions
Marcus Thompson
CEO
Expedient Technology Solutions invested in and developed its own data center and accelerated the move to managed cloud and managed backup. The MSP added co-managed IT services and monitoring and maintenance managed services for customers with an existing IT staff who could use some additional help. The company added a project manager position that has kept things on track and completion on schedule. At the end of the year the MSP added a self-service scheduling tool that has been well received.
High Touch Technologies
Derrick Nielsen
President, CEO
In 2020 High Touch made significant changes to its organizational structure to streamline operations for the benefit of both customers and employees. This involved investing in the network and security operations facets of the business and centralizing both the company’s tier one help desk and scheduling services across its six markets. The result has been better clarity for High Touch’s 170 employees on the company’s standard operational procedures, and more efficient support for its customers.
iCorps Technologies
Michael Hadley
President, CEO
With the onset of Covid-19, two things came into sharp relief: Businesses needed to quickly adopt secure remote work models and the leadership to do so was often lacking or strained. At a time when the traditional in-office model was in flux, iCorps Technologies wanted to provide support and stability to companies navigating the transition.
To meet this emerging need, the company launched “IT Leadership On-Demand,” a comprehensive consulting service that provides strategic, CIO-level guidance to companies. Rather than hiring a full-time IT leader, businesses can leverage IT Leadership On-Demand for technology professionals with the insight and business acumen to support their objectives.
Lunavi
Shawn Mills
Founder, CEO
Lunavi acquired an Agile software development firm to offer customers application modernization, cloud-native app development and DevOps enablement services. This strategy enables partnerships from data center infrastructure solutions, through managed services and all the way up into the application stack itself.
The company also continues to align closely with Microsoft as an Azure Expert MSP, offering managed cloud solutions and modern workplace apps such as Microsoft 365.
Network Solutions & Technology
William Collins
President
The pandemic has really allowed Network Solutions & Technology to focus on its internal policies and procedures. The MSP now has every process in its organization documented with detailed workflows. The impact that has provided is now all 70-plus employees know exactly what the process is for a certain task.
This has made the MSP extremely efficient from the help desk, security desk, NOC and project teams. In addition, as the company brings in new employees or acquires organizations, the time needed for employees to be trained on the NST process is much shorter due to the fact that the company now has everything documented.
NWN
Jim Sullivan
CEO
The most significant change was NWN’s focus on enabling mission-critical, essential businesses to not only survive but thrive in the wake of the pandemic.
NWN launched the First-Responder Bundle designed to support organizations under tremendous pressure due to COVID-19. NWN expanded the capabilities of its Solution-as-a-Service portfolio to include secure wireless networking, collaboration software and mobile devices tailored to first responders to support local, state and federal agencies during the pandemic.
Also key was delivering NWN‘s Experience Management Platform to customers for the accelerated self-service, self-care and analytics that customers need in today’s work-from-anywhere environment.
Procurri
Zack Sexton
Head of Americas
Procurri realigned its business from global regions into business units. The MSP carved out its Maintenance, Professional Services, Hardware and Lifecycle Services into separate P&Ls.
Syntek Solutions
Mayron Herrera
CEO
Syntek Solutions implemented scorecards and general metrics throughout the organization in an effort to manage and drive results. The MSP also created a marketing engine and is ready to hit the ground running in 2021.
Techworks Consulting
Christopher Coluccio
Co-Founder, CEO
Techworks Consulting spent countless efforts over the past year building co-opetition strategic partnerships with local and national IT professional solution providers. The MSP built offerings around filling in each other‘s strengths and weaknesses to jointly support new and existing clients. This has given the company the ability to expand its reach outside of its local region and support clients nationwide. Techworks Consulting also is able to offer a plethora of services to support its customers and market to new industries the MSP normally would be hesitant to pursue.
Uprise
Malinda Gagnon
Co-Founder, CEO
Uprise launched its managed services group in March 2020 in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and has completely transformed its consulting organization to a managed recurring revenue model, doubling year-over-year run rates.
vCORE
Steve Leavitt
Founder, CEO
2020 was a year of laser focus on what vCORE does really well while leaning into the subdisciplines where momentum has accelerated due to the pandemic. Those practices include cloud, modern infrastructure and networking, all infused with security architectures and technologies, enabled for any cloud (public or private). Any solution the MSP designs or recommends can be managed by its team and consumed as a monthly service.