A common complaint amongst MSPs is the struggle to recruit staff. It makes sense as depending on the MSP model you have, you may require more technical and specialized people to fill roles. Maybe you’re not sure when you should be looking to expand your team or have understanding of why it’s so hard to grow a team.
Regardless of the situation, recruiting staff isn’t a new problem nor is it a geographical challenge either. The IT industry has a skills shortage already making it hard to find staff .
In the end, in order to solve this problem, MSPs have to think differently about how to reach their clients demands and begin building alliances with other IT businesses.
Why Build These Alliances?
This strategy is often overlooked when growing your business and it makes sense why. If you’re more competitive minded, it might feel like “joining with your enemy”. In other cases, these alliances don’t necessarily mitigate the need of a company having to recruit in order for their business to grow.
But setting those things aside for now, consider this scenario:
A prospect approaches you and offers a large project for you to handle. This is the largest project your business has ever taken. If you get your hands on it, you know that managing this will put a strain on the team you have and the resources you have. Everything will go downhill fast if you take this project.
In that scenario, you have three options:
- You can turn down the opportunity – which doesn’t help you or your business goals if you are planning on growing.
- You can look to hiring new staff to help with this opportunity – though this is going to be an expensive and long process.
- Or you can consider hiring freelancers or contract workers to fill in the gaps – but this comes with its own challenges and is the most expensive option out of these three.
A typical MSP would be in a tough bind in this situation regardless. That is unless the MSP has been working on establishing alliances.
Strategic Alliances Make You More Flexible
Looking back at the scenario above, it’s clear that by working on alliances, you’ll have more flexibility than if you didn’t have any. Through alliances, your MSP can stretch to cover these larger projects without you risking on taking on new employees.
On top of this, it also allows you to provide specialties that you might not be able to cover on your own or struggle to provide. In a sense, it expands your customer pool and customers can see a larger appeal in hiring you too.
All in all, viewing other MSPs as way to offer more services and solutions to your clients, you’ll be growing your own business by collaboration rather than staying in competition with them all the time.
Accepting Strategic Alliances Only Help You
A lot of MSPs right now are struggling with recruiting staff in order to grow, and they haven’t ever considered strategic alliances as an alternative option.
It’s a sign that MSPs should be embracing these alliances as they can provide additional resources for larger projects and offer specialty skills that go beyond the core offering. It turns out that these alliances are one of the best-kept secrets to growing in the industry and meeting the demands of MSPs and the customers they serve.
About MSP Corp
MSP Corp understands you’ve worked hard to build your business and you want to protect it. With a mission to be a world-class business partner for MSP owners across Canada, we actively seek to acquire and partner with owners looking to secure the value of the business they have built and provide a seamless exit process that ensures business continuity and employee and client stability.
Contact us today to learn more about selling your business and maximizing its value.