Wednesday 21 July 2010

Managed Services Training Day

Managed Services Training

We facilitated a training session this morning with an I.T. firm’s team on how to implement a similar hybrid managed services model to ours.

We addressed the need to understand our clients and how they utilize their technology, how their utilization can be improved, as well as how assess those needs.

We also delved into how to present our managed services in such a way that the business owner realizes just how valuable they are. The value discussion is where the deal is won or lost.

From augmenting our existing client’s managed services with ExchangeDefender to facilitating their licensing using SPLA to enable a low monthly payment we discussed the many ways that we can pull together hardware, software, licensing, and our services to provide a great managed services offering.

In the end everyone appreciated the training and gave 100% positive feedback.

MPECS Inc’s Managed Services Offering

For us, our implementing of a hybrid managed services platform has eased the feast and famine cycle significantly. By doing so, we are better able to bring on part time technicians to help out with our client support needs and as we grow to look at bringing on a part time sales person. In both cases we hope to move towards a full time staff.

We make our monthly managed services charges a part of any quote or proposal that is going out to a prospective client. During our conversations with the owner/contact we would have discussed those services and their value.

An analogy that can be used with the owner/contact would be along the lines of a car needing regular oil changes, brake work, tires, cleaning, and the like as part of their ongoing ownership expenses. We expect those charges for our vehicles, we should also expect them for our IT infrastructure.

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

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