A new report from Action1 says that 23% of small and midsize businesses are looking to replace their current managed services provider. Forty-eight percent of respondents complained about performance issues with devices, which was the top factor that would cause them to change. Another major reason was outages or unplanned system reboots, which 33 percent of respondents reported.
Unrelated, IR announced their findings on MSPs too. 52% of organizations interviewed are focused on infrastructure modernization. With these evolving mandates, tech teams are engaging MSPs to help them achieve business goals. While 43% are scaling existing technology, 36% are deploying new technologies. Their key point — CIOs and tech teams are witnessing a shift in their mandates. They are now also tasked with delivering business and customer outcomes.
Roughly 25% of providers are breaking even or losing money too. Correlation is not causation, and I’m not necessarily directly relating the two… I’m just observing that not all providers are the same. And, let’s say it, not all are competent.
Let’s take the two points together. Customers will react badly to core service problems – and if you’re not doing the entry-level well of keeping things running, they will leave. But that’s just the barrier to entry – and if you want more leeway for any possible stumbles, you had better focus on those business goals. It’s easier for a customer to forgive a stumble when you’re driving the bottom line directly.