Words Of Wisdom From An MSP 'Pioneer'

Paul Chisholm, former CEO of the highly-successful MSP, mindSHIFT Technologies, shared his thoughts and tips for industry best practices on Tuesday at Continuum's Navigate conference in Boston.

Waltham, Mass.-based mindSHIFT grew its business to hundreds of millions of dollars under Chisholm's direction and made eight acquisitions between 2008 to 2011. Chisholm oversaw the company's sale to Best Buy in 2011 when the company claimed to be the largest MSP in the U.S. covering the small- and medium-sized business market. Best Buy said in January it plans to sell the MSP to Ricoh.

Chisholm said this week the landscape in the MSP world has changed to become "very, very complex," pointing to major companies getting involved, including Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Google and Verizon.

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"The largest suppliers are now competitors," he said. "The same who you thought were friends are now your enemies, yet they're still valuable partners. Basically, you can't live with them and you can't live without them. Its a dilemma, to say the least. … It's really an opportunity."

He urged MSPs not to maintain "the status quo" and to follow business trends in IT, including cloud, BYOD and proven processes. He offered sage advice as well on how to get back to the fundamentals of business. He reminded company leaders in the room a CEO sets the tone for an organization, from culture to productivity, and noted leaders should find the right people for businesses and hold their companies accountable to customers.

"Don't hire resumes. Don't hire schools. Don't hire other companies. Hire individuals," he said. "And have executive presence. … That's not just attending a Chamber of Commerce luncheon."

Chisholm said he personally calls companies directly to ask how he can earn their business. Those kinds of personal touches can help a business compete against "giants," he said, adding, "customer service will always be a differentiator."

"I call a customer to say, 'We screwed up yesterday,'" he said. "Local people like dealing with local people. … They want to know you're focused on small and medium businesses."

Jeffrey Loeb, vice president of operations for the MSP Infitech IT in West Chester, Ohio, said he was happy to hear from someone so well-versed in the market.

"It's good to hear insights from someone who has been a pioneer…," he said. "He's built a huge company around this. He took basically a small MSP and grew it to one of the largest in the country."

For the future, Chisholm said he sees data recovery and security issues as paramount problems or MSPs to solve and managing hybrids will becomes "the norm, not the exception."

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Following Chisholm's talk, Len DiCostanzo, senior vice president of community and business development with Autotask, also stressed how accountability would pull MSPs ahead. Autotask recently conducted a survey with 1,300 service providers and found in 27 percent were not soliciting client feedback in 2013. Thirty percent of the respondents also said they were meeting SLAs 90 percent of the time, while the other 70 percent were not. He advised partners in the room to concentrate on communicating with their clients and to adjust to their needs based on their offered criticism and ideas.

DiCostanzo also said in Autotask's study, 55 percent of the respondents said they retained 90 percent of their clients -- that's a 20 percent drop, he said, from findings in 2013.

"That's an issue," he said. "Users are confused regarding who to call. … You have to take that first call. … You want them to know [when they have IT problems or needs] to call you."

Continuum representatives encouraged conference attendees to share their concerns and issues adapting in changing times with their latest product "Collaborate," an online forum for MSPs.

Dee Zepf, Continuum's vice president of products and technical services, said in a press release issued Tuesday the online venue allows partners to interact with one another, across Continuum's 3,500 partner base. The platform lets partners share key updates, insights, thought leadership and business ideas that go beyond popular public social media sites.

PUBLISHED SEPT. 23, 2014