Evolving your managed services catalog to support the remote and hybrid workforce
The changing dynamics of the modern workplace are creating new opportunities for MSPs to grow their list of services to aid customers in optimizing workforce productivity.
As you attempt to strategize on how to best meet the continually changing needs of your customers while also seeking to differentiate your business from the next MSP, it’s important to start by looking at operational changes in the companies you serve and to create new ways to make them successful. One of the most obvious changes over the past 18 months is the move to supporting remote/hybrid workers. The hybrid workforce can consist of both in-house and remote employees, or a scenario where most employees regularly split their time between working from home and the office.
Most MSPs have responded by assisting customers in moving applications to the cloud, providing remote access to customer-internal resources, and increasing cybersecurity measures to protect this new investment.
More than just supporting a remote workforce
But beyond the issue of creating a new hybrid environment in which to operate, one of the largest challenges still facing SMBs in the current one is ensuring equivalent—if not higher—levels of productivity from employees. The use of new cloud-based applications, models of collaborating, processes, and new business workflows can prove challenging to any workforce, whether in the office or at home. Over two-thirds of employees (69%) see productivity and an ability to collaborate as top concerns when working remotely. Without these being addressed, employers face the risk of employee burnout—something nobody wants.
As a result, organizations are now looking for new ways to get visibility into productivity or work habits for the purpose of measuring performance and gaining insight on processes that could use improvement. Workforce analytics platforms like ActivTrak have evolved to meet this challenge and provide the management capabilities needed by MSPs to incorporate this emerging category into their managed IT services catalog.
Evolving to include workforce analytics
This creates an opportunity for MSPs to begin offering workforce analytics to their customer base to address the growing demand for visibility and insights into how work gets done across remote/hybrid/in-office teams. Gartner’s definition of workforce analytics is as follows:
An advanced set of data analysis tools and metrics for comprehensive workforce performance measurement and improvement.
In practical terms (as it relates to your business offering a service), this translates to having a solution in place that collects and analyzes workforce data to provide visibility into how your customer’s employees and teams work, yielding insight into what habits, processes, and workflows—on both an individual and group level—can be improved to optimize productivity, or can be adopted by others to share best practices.
What’s in it for the customer?
Productivity has a direct influence on profitability—this isn’t news to your customers. But they normally have no real ability, other than through trial and error, to attain improved levels of productivity. Those customers that take advantage of a workforce analytics service offering will be able to quickly and easily determine which employees and teams are most and least productive, understand factors contributing to this, and use the detail to increase the level of organizational productivity overall.
Additionally, your customers receive insights (not simply data) about healthy work habits, so managers can balance workloads, have meaningful coaching conversations, help spot and prevent burnout, and ultimately retain their best employees.
What’s in it for the MSP?
There are three key benefits to the MSP:
- Enhances your services and differentiates your business from the competition. The need to measure and improve productivity is in high demand; customers just aren’t aware there’s a way to solve this problem.
- Demonstrates value. Customers using workforce analytics reports or dashboards consistently see the value of this service.
- Shows your investment in your customer’s success. This service tangibly improves how a client’s business runs and assists in increasing their bottom line, which can help strengthen your relationship with them long term.
Aligning Your service catalog with the modern workforce
While your customers’ needs will always include the architecting, implementing, managing, and supporting of operational technology, today’s workforce has created a new visibility problem customers simply cannot solve on their own. So it’s time for their trusted advisor—the MSP—to evolve its services to include a means of providing insights and recommendations to ensure an organization is optimized across people, process, and technology.
The workforce analytics service opportunity uniquely provides MSPs with a new revenue stream applicable to customers in every industry vertical. By providing actionable visibility into workforce behaviors, MSPs solidify their position with customers as a partner working to positively impact their business.
Andrea Tharp, director of worldwide channels with ActivTrak
Learn more about the ActivTrak partner program for managed services providers and how you can offer highly profitable workforce analytics solutions to your customers.
ActivTrak is a member of the N‑able MSP Technology Alliance Program (TAP). TAP is a growing group of trusted vendors we’ve teamed up with to offer a variety of third-party integrations and services to help MSPs better serve their customers. This blog is part of the TAP blog series through which we will provide you with relevant and interesting guest blog contributions from our TAP members.