Education preventing MSP’s to thrive

It’s widely accepted that the cloud is the future for MSP’s, and while an increasing number of MSP’s are adhering to the market changes, their revenue isn’t reflected within their cloud offering. So what exactly is stifling the growth and success of selling cloud for the Channel?

Techaisle’s SMB Channel Partner Trends research indicated that a lack of expertise was a major barrier preventing the success of a cloud offering. It is this lack of education that is stifling the growth of the Australian Channel market, especially in SME sector.

The importance of developing strong Partnerships with vendors is essential for the deliverance and execution of cloud services. When researching MSP’s and organisations to form Partnerships with, it is vital that they provide an education or training element to their onboarding process. MSP’s moving to selling cloud services need to familiarise themselves with not only the solution they are selling, but the vendors they are acquiring resources from – open and approachable communication is key.

Techaisle’s study also found that lack of in-house cloud expertise is a problem that has continued to rise from 35% in 2013, to 40% in 2015 and needs to be addressed. While it’s great for senior roles to be across all technical and sale facets of the business, not dedicating time to educating and training junior team members or helpdesk employees is a risk that prevents MSP’s from thriving.

Your team are the first point of contact for a client with an issue whether it be a networking or service error, this first point of contact can potentially be the decider in client engagement or reluctance with the cloud. By investing time to educate your team, you’ll be investing in long term success (and less headaches too!) If Directors and senior staff aren’t equipped with the resources to conduct training, a good vendor will know when to intervene and assist in a way that complies with the workplace culture of your organisation.

Hosted Network understands the importance of education and staff training for tiered workforces. To combat the growing issue of education as cloud services continue to evolve, Hosted Network provide sales, marketing and technical resourcesacross all topics to assist in this constant learning process. Any Partner who feels as though their team requires further training, Hosted Network are readily available to assist.