SkyKick Partners share how they’re weathering the storm before the calm and what’s next
We’ve been listening closely to our partner community over the past few months to better understand of the specific effects of the pandemic’s effect on their business and customers. While our goal was to learn how IT Service Providers are managing through the crisis, we also discovered some important themes which we thought would be worthwhile to share more broadly with our community.
The Storm
A clear common denominator among all the partners we talked with was that the crisis kicked off a firestorm of work for their practices – much of it in reaction to the huge spike in remote working scenarios, as mandated by government ‘shelter in place’ restrictions. This incredible spike highlights the clear importance of the MSP role in supporting their customers’ IT environments. As one partner put it succinctly, they are definitely in “the storm before the calm.”
Some of the most explicit examples of this:
- Up to 4X support volume & complexity. Partners reported a massive uptick in support tickets as their customers look for help to get setup for remote work – lighting up Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and other collaboration software. Migration projects already in the pipeline are being accelerated in the interest of remote working and business continuity.
- Immediate cost pressures are accelerating. For partners serving customers in essential industries it is “business as usual”. And the surge of support requests is driving up Help Desk costs as Partners try their best to meet customer demand for cloud-based technologies. For those customers in hard-hit industries, MSPs are already facing contractual change requests. There has been a steady increase in the number of “offboarding” support tickets pointing to customer layoffs. Many indicated that they are implementing contingency plans and preparing for a possible recession, though all indicated an amount of uncertainty over the next 3-9 months and are looking to their peers for additional guidance.
- This is a PEOPLE problem too. Partners shared many heroic stories of technicians and staff going above and beyond to support their customers. Unfortunately, that courageous work has taken a toll. Long hours and changes in work style/location have put extra stress on the partners’ employees requiring MSP leaders to find ways of assisting with their employees’ well-being and mental health.
The Calm?
However, there was also a strong, unanimous belief among partners that after the storm, the calm would yield up a different type of activity – a wave of customer requests for investing in cloud, security and automated technology, to ensure they are more prepared in the future. The partners all shared examples of customers who, prior to the storm, viewed migrating to the cloud as a ‘nice to have’ – and were now looking at it as a necessity.
Whether in the Storm or the Calm, SkyKick is here to help
Since our founding, we’ve been committed to helping Partners build a more successful cloud business. Because of all the feedback shared by our community, the entire SkyKick team has been working tirelessly to accelerate innovation to help our partners respond to the changing challenges of today and strengthen their businesses for a better tomorrow. Learn how SkyKick is supporting partners.
Early release of the NEW Cloud Manager
To help our Partners respond to the demand for remote-work technologies and massive uptick in support volume, we’ve opened up early access to SkyKick’s newest product, Cloud Manager. And you can now take advantage of a free 90-day trial of Cloud Manager to speed up service delivery without compromising quality or security.
With Cloud Manager, you can quickly activate and securely manage Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom and other cloud apps for your customers. On top of the 1,500+ built-in commands, we’ve released ready-to-use scripts to easily setup and configure Microsoft Teams – even for customers with an on-premises environment. What could normally take upwards of 2 hours manually (more if you don’t yet have AD Sync set up,) takes only minutes.
To activate your free trial – simply log-in to the SkyKick Partner portal and go to Cloud Manager in the left-hand navigation.
MSP Business Continuity with SkyKick Products
SkyKick’s industry-leading Cloud Backup solution includes Microsoft Teams data, which is more important than ever before with the 70%+ spike in usage. And, SkyKick Cloud Backup is now available with more payment flexibility with monthly billing plans for annual Cloud Backup subscriptions.
Customers are asking to accelerate their migrations into Office 365, and SkyKick can help. Since meeting customers face-to-face may not be possible, meet that demand remotely with SkyKick Migration Suites. Learn how.
New community forum and more resources
We’ve created a new community for you to connect with peers on essential topics from best practices on MSP operations to customer engagement to using SkyKick products with success. Explore discussions.
SkyKick has also curated technical and business resources to help you stay current, proactive, and supportive to your clients. View resources.