The "One-Stop Shop": How MSPs Can Drive Better Business While Delivering Superior Customer Outcomes

In recent years, businesses have rapidly transformed their businesses. They are embracing cloud at an unprecedented rate, and decentralising their IT environments so that employees can work remotely and with greater agility.

These are all positive outcomes, but they have also led to a phenomenon known as "vendor blowout". To transform quickly, organisations adopted many services and partners and this resulted in an explosion of suppliers, making it increasingly challenging for businesses to manage their vendor relationships effectively.

This wasn't just an efficiency concern. Organisations with large numbers of vendors face increased cyber security risks, from the various technologies that may or may not be integrated properly into the environment. It also slows down innovation, as applications and services have compatibility issues.

Unsurprisingly, organisations are looking to consolidate the number of IT suppliers they work with, and in doing so achieve four business objectives:

• Increased Efficiency: Consolidating IT vendors can lead to increased spending power and free staff to focus on other priorities.
• Increased Efficiency: Cost Savings: By working with one (or a small number of) suppliers, an organisation can usually negotiate a lower rate for each individual service within the overall engagement.
• Improved Collaboration: Companies with advanced procurement functions have found that when buyers and suppliers are willing and able to cooperate, they can often find ways to unlock significant new sources of value that benefit them both.
• Better Management: It's simply easier and more efficient to manage an IT environment when you only need one or two phone numbers to reach your suppliers.

This trend is renewing interest in adopting managed services. By working with Kinetix, and its reseller program around nbn services, MSPs can take true ownership of their customer's technology, from end to end.

What a "One Stop" solution looks like

MSPs have a real opportunity by becoming "one stop shops" for customers, providing end-to-end services that address their customer's needs at every step of the way.

Spending on MSP services is going to increase by 8.4% this year, highlighting the value that these companies offer the market when calibrated well. What MSPs need to do to deliver to their customer's needs in the current market is four-fold:

1. Building a Total Tech Stack: An all-inclusive tech stack that caters to the client's tech needs is crucial. This could include everything from setting up and maintaining networks and infrastructure, providing cybersecurity services, managing wireless and mobile devices, to assisting in communication services such as VOIP. Critically, it should also mean that you provide the Internet connection. So often MSPs overlook this component, but bundling Internet connectivity in provides a dashboard that allows the MSP to better assist their client at the connectivity level.
2. Improving Value: The more solutions and services your clients consolidate with you, the more monetary savings and efficiencies they can achieve. This reduces the amount of documentation, contracts, communications, billing, and other administrative tasks that the client traditionally performs with multiple vendors. It's important to make sure that these savings are clearly articulated in the way that the MSP service is presented.
3. Increasing Stickiness: The stickiness factor measures how well you've embedded your services with your clients, and how difficult it would be for them to leave the partnership. Often, people assume that "stickiness" comes from managing complex solutions, but this isn't the case at all. Often the stickiness comes from simply being the point of contact for something fundamental, like the Internet connection.
4. Becoming More Relevant: By covering all their needs and simplifying IT vendor and solution management, you stand to increase your relevance to their daily operations.

The role of the Kinetix Reseller Program in supporting MSPs

Often, nbn wholesale providers, such as Kinetix, are expected to engage with ISPs, and MSPs that do want to offer Internet as part of the solution will deal with them. However, the Kinetix Reseller Program offers a host of benefits to MSPs in helping them build that total stack solution.

The program allows MSPs to leverage Kinetix's robust infrastructure and extensive service portfolio. This means they can offer their clients high-quality services while also benefiting from Kinetix's technical support and expertise.

It works quite simply. We treat every client referred to us by our MSP partners as our own direct customer. We order and manage the nbn connection, IP addressing, billing and payments, customer support, troubleshooting, and more. The MSP simply brings the customer to us and earns the commission.

It's even possible to use our Order Wizard for your customers to sign up, without needing your Reseller Code. This experience is branded with your colours and logos and can be linked to from the MSPO's own Website, making it clear that they are signing up to a Kinetix Networks plan through you. With this approach, the MSP will be able to maintain the relationship and be the primary contact for the customer when it comes to guidance and support. We simply run in the background as part of your IT stack that they're never aware of.

What this means for MSPs

MSPs that partner with Kinetix become the "Internet provider" to their customers. This is in addition to the many value-adding features and capabilities that we deliver that MSPs can build further services on.

For the MSP it means three key benefits:

• Increased Customer Loyalty: By offering a broader range of services, MSPs can become more integral to their clients' operations, fostering stronger relationships and increasing customer loyalty.
• Operational Efficiency: Consolidating services under one provider simplifies management tasks for MSPs, allowing them to operate more efficiently.
• Competitive Advantage: Offering a one-stop solution can differentiate MSPs in a crowded market, giving them a competitive edge.

MSPs will play a critical role in the Australian IT landscape, as organisations look to consolidate and reduce the number of "touchpoints" that they have with technology services. The MSPs that do this effectively will be the ones that form the right partnerships so that they can add value and become an indispensable arm to their customer's business.