A Crucial Helping Hand: Why Managed Service Providers Must Now Play a Part in Digital Service Delivery

During any period of challenge and change, our relationships undergo a fundamental transformation. In the last one and half years, companies have had to rebuild their lines of engagement with the workforce and strengthen relationships within their partner network. It was a difficult task. Without in-person interactions and severe restrictions on business travel, service providers and their clients have had to pivot and form new rules of engagement. Now, the focus is on constant low-touch communication, monitoring of required tangible metrics, value addition, and adopting customer products/services. The status quo is disrupted, and new digital services are adopted.

So, what lies ahead beyond the next bend on the road? How can these relationships evolve to achieve the goals, overcome the challenges and capitalise on the opportunities of 2022? To chalk out a viable blueprint, we must first consider next year’s priority list.

Digital Transformation Is Accelerating

During COVID, most enterprises faced a budget crunch and thus are forced to either scale down or be lean. But even amid this climate, expenditure on digital initiatives has only grown.

69% of digital transformation leaders (as surveyed by Deloitte) plan to increase their financial commitments to digital transformation. On average, this translates to an expenditure of $12.6 million per enterprise per year — incidentally, a 15% increase from pre-pandemic spending.

In other words, there’s been no room to slow down. Digital transformation is now a strategy for competitive differentiation and a survival tactic. Meanwhile, the pre-pandemic state of digital maturity in most industries was ill-suited for this dramatic upheaval. In another survey, less than 50% said they were prepared due to digitalisation and could accelerate when needed.

Therefore, we must ask, who makes up the gap?

IT Can’t Go It Alone

It is an understatement; Enterprise IT teams worldwide faced unprecedented pressure during the pandemic. In many ways, they took over as the business’s pillar. Mission-critical processes such as collaboration-based productive work or client communications rely on remote and IT-managed channels. Therefore, it is no surprise that 88% of IT professionals negatively impact their personal lives during this period. Nearly 50% faced a decline in work-life balance, 38.1% struggled due to increased tools, and 43.4% had to upskill quickly.

These pressures have contributed to a disconnect between IT and business teams. As a result, it is vital that an external partner steps in to ease workloads and unlock those new opportunities that IT alone cannot. For instance, nearly 70% of operational teams value speed and agility as the core component of their technology strategy. However, only 53.4% of IT teams (the folks powering your technology infrastructure) agree.

It is an expectation that enterprises will continue to find themselves in a similar position in 2022 risk losing out on market opportunities.

Turbulent Waters Ahead?

2022 will usher in a new and arguably more complex market landscape for enterprises. Deloitte’s survey mentions that more than 75% of enterprises believe digital is the key differentiator. As a result, competition will become even more fierce in five years.

The nature of competition will also change — less than 1 in 3 companies feel that they will go up against a current competitor in the future. Instead, startups and digital natives will come to the forefront and challenge existing market dynamics.

In other words, not only will existing pressures on IT NOT be alleviated, but there will also be new and additional workloads and the stress of fast-tracked innovation. Throughout all of this, the workforce will continue to operate in a distributed manner, which necessitates infra support, and customers’ omnichannel expectations will steadily grow.

How MSPs Can Intervene and Support

The above reasons explain why managed service providers must act as digital service providers, partnering with enterprises on strategic change. This approach can help to reap significant benefits. Research suggests that companies that view trusted MSPs as “not very important” or “not at all important” are more likely to be market laggards. Specifically, only 2% of this group are leaders, while 62% are laggards. Stronger MSP relationships centred on digital priorities will ensure that you lead the pack.

There are several ways MSPs can play a role in the newly christened digital economy of 2022:

● Infrastructure modernisation, cloud migration, and SaaS adoption

● Network transformation to accommodate new ways of working

● Customisation for off-the-shelf technology platforms and products (SAP, Salesforce, etc.).

● Data science, modelling, and analytics insights generation

● Edge computing, IoT infrastructure, and new cybersecurity strategies like SASE

● Management and upgrade of automation scripts to support business projects

Asking for Help

To forge effective partnerships with MSPs, enterprises must take stock of their current state of digital maturity and general satisfaction among IT teams. Relationships in 2022 must stem from deep IT involvement without any attempt to impose business expectations on IT in an arbitrary manner. Ultimately, MSPs and internal IT work in sync with a digital economy. More than 40% of enterprises that managed to share three-quarters of IT workloads with an external MSP could successfully take advantage of market opportunities in 2020–2021 and scale or pivot.

In 2022, when these opportunities increase in number and scope, the relationships you forge will be all the more critical. Managed service providers, on their part, must focus on the client experience, onboarding efficacy, and new value generation like never before to keep pushing the needle in the right direction — and with perfect synergy.

What are your thoughts on the role of MSPs in the new year? You can reach me at Arvind@AM-PMAssociates.com to continue the conversation.