Consolidation is a feature of the MSP business, says David Bellini, President and co-founder, ConnectWise International. “Among the changes in the last year, there has been consolidation in the industry and this is a healthy sign – we also do a bit of matchmaking for people with the ConnectWise product suite.”
This is inevitable as the trend is still towards doing more with less resources – payroll is still a big cost and more than half of everyone's revenue, he says. “This will continue. For us, and for MSPs, we have to keep working smarter.”
But the MSP does not have to be expert in everything: “The resources are now available online – through the likes of Amazon cloud, Microsoft Azure, and this means we don't have to build our own data centres. Ten years ago we all had to build the giant centres – we weren't that great at it, but had to do it. The tools are all there now and cost a lot less; VOIP is a great example of this, using someone else's service.”
And ConnectWise is planning further growth, doing this through partners. “When you building a software platform, you can't be everything to everyone, so the concept is that you build a lot of APIs, so that if we need an accounting product, it integrates with Great Plains, QuickBooks and so on. We have partners – and we make sure the API set is very strong and supported. We are following the Salesforce model in a smaller way, and it has been very successful with about 300 different integrators for our software. We also have “citizen developers” who write little bits of code using the APIs for things like reports. This has been very successful for us.”
Customer service is going to be king: “At the end of the day, barriers to entry in our industry are low – you don't need a lot of certifications, you can just jump in. Most of our partners are what we can call accidental entrepreneurs – they didn't mean to go into business, but they have turned round and found they are employing people and have an office etc. It is great, and exciting to watch – they think they have a lot more freedom – but in fact the customer is the boss. The whole goal of a product like ours is to make it easier for the MSP. There is more competition, but this business is increasingly about customer service. I want to have a delightful experience when I call my MSP.”
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