By Scott Hoffpauir, Managing Partner

Channels have always been an important route to market for collaboration solutions, providing value added services to the enterprise in addition to reselling products. The transition to the cloud and SaaS hasn’t changed the need for this route to market, but it does impact what a channel can provide on top of the base services provided by the SaaS solutions. Channels don’t want to be “just” a reseller with low margins and little differentiation. They want to provide a competitive solution with true value add. With today’s SaaS solutions, many of the traditional services provided by channels are provided by the supplier — things like installation, onboarding and upgrades. So, to be successful, channels have to think differently. They have to become “cloud first” managed service providers.

Ok, so what does this mean? Now, let’s dive into the details. Here are the key areas we think are the most important for a cloud first managed service provider.

1 — Choosing your application Suite. It’s important to think about what applications you’re providing. Enterprises are looking for a suite of complementary applications that work together to solve their business problems. For those managed service providers focused on collaboration, this includes solutions for calling, meetings and messaging. Customer engagement solutions — contact centers, workforce optimization, virtual assistants, customer relationship management — are often bundled together with collaboration. Some collaboration solutions also include applications for a digital workplace, integrating with productivity, storage, mail, directory and virtualization applications. And for some verticals, mobility has become a necessity driving the need for mobile device management, location services, mobile edge computing and the Internet of Things (IoT). So, you need to think about a compelling suite of applications that meets the needs of the industries and verticals you’re targeting.

2 — Integrating customer applications. Once you’ve selected your application suite, you need to think about integrating the applications. For example, a contact center solution needs to be integrated with a customer relationship management solution. Almost all cloud SaaS solutions provide APIs for integration and specialization. APIs provide a great way of easily integrating applications and addressing industry and vertical specific requirements. Traditionally, managed service providers haven’t done a lot of software development, but with SaaS solutions, this is changing. While you don’t need to be a hardcore, Silicon Valley like development job, you do need to have a team that can provide the integrations and customizations required for the applications you’re providing and the industries and verticals you’re targeting. With a little software development, you can provide a lot of differentiation for your solutions.

3 — Access and Security. Enterprises have embraced the virtual office, with more and more people working from home, customer sites and remote locations. The applications you provide need to work the same regardless of where employees are at and how they’re accessing the applications. Enterprises want to provide high quality networking and secure access to everyone, regardless of where they’re working, how they’re accessing the applications, and what equipment they’re using. Most SaaS suppliers don’t worry about access and security, but enterprises require more than just access over the public Internet. You should consider including access with the applications you’re providing, including solutions for SD-WAN, endpoint security, and identity management. By bundling access, networking and security with the applications you’re providing, you can better serve the needs of enterprises and increase your top line.

4 — Focus on customer success. The key to long term customer retention and satisfaction, is to provide an end-to-end customer journey for all of the applications in your suite. You start with the buying phase, where you focus on generating awareness and helping enterprises identify their problems, then on consideration where the enterprise defines their problems and researches solutions, and last on the decision where the enterprise chooses your solutions. You’ll also need to focus on onboarding and adoption, ensuring a streamlined and automated way of turning up services and showing value to your customers. Most SaaS solutions provide some or all of the customer journey, but it’s only for their products. As a managed service provider, you should focus on bringing all of your applications together into a uniform journey. This includes things like digital buying tools, unified provisioning and an integrated management portal. Focusing on the overall customer journey is key to long term customer success.

This is quite a different approach than what was done with premises based solutions, but it does allow a “cloud first” managed service provider to offer a truly differentiated solution with long term value add to the enterprise. Many managed service providers will have to work hard to transition from how things were done to how they need to be done moving forward, but with a little planning, you should be able to transition to this model over time. In our next blog, we’ll provide an example of a suite of applications and services a managed service provider can provide for a specific industry.