Pax8's New Eagle Eyed Stax Product Gives MSPs Sales Wings

High-flying cloud distributor Pax8 Friday launched Pax8 Stax- a new business intelligence dashboard for MSPs aimed at driving more cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.

The breakthrough platform gives MSPs the ability to visualize what cloud software offerings can be stacked together taking account of data from other MSPs.

[Related: Pax8's Stax Designer Offers MSPs Configuration, Licensing And Billing For Cloud-Based Apps]

Pax8 Chief Channel Officer Ryan Walsh said he expects the new tool to make it easy for MSPs to offer a complete cloud solution stack to customers.

"Let’s say they're selling on average something like three different cloud services to their customers," he said . "The averages that we track could cover up to six or seven. So the opportunity costs of not finding those other three or four is huge, and it gets compounded."

With Pax8 Stax, MSPs can instantly move a stack of products to new customers or users. A stack, is a bundle of software that MSPs group together for customers.. While a stack is supposed to make it simpler to deliver a complete cloud solution, it can sometimes be difficult to track which customer needs which product, said Don Jeter, Pax8 vice president of marketing. By turning that data into a visualization, Stax can eliminate those gaps.

"Were looking at two things. We're looking to not only improve their efficiency, but then help them proactively up sell and cross sell," Jeter said. "The challenge for them with up sell and cross sell is visibility. They don't know who to target. This tool gives them the vision and then the automation to go out and have those sales conversations. Its certainly going to save them time. However the real benefit is giving them the tools they need to go and sell more."

Walsh said Stax will give MSPs a dashboard where they can look at what they are offering customers, what software is available, as well as information about what products other MSPs are providing similar customers. Pax8 is providing stacks configured for MSPs working inside highly regulated industries such as health care and finance, among others.

"Cloud is adapting very quickly and there's a lot of new product categories coming in all the time, to keep up with how to you need to protect your customers in this day and age is always a constant challenge," he said. "So by organizing our product into categories and then giving the business intelligence to the partner as far as what they're providing their customers, real time without having to wait, they're able to identify how to help customers and how to sell more."

The Stax8 dashboard also provides "increased visibility" into cloud consumption trends that are sure to pay off in higher profits for MSPs and cost savings for customers, said Nick Heddy, senior vice president of sales and marketing for Pax8.

Bret Meche, owner of Premier Data Systems, a Lafayette, La., IT provider that has field tested Stax, said the product is already paying big dividends. He said one danger that Stax protects against is selling customers licensed products without invoices and eating that cost.

’With Pax8 Stax, I can easily adjust my seat counts of Microsoft, Datto, and Webroot, all with a single click," he said. "Now my technical staff can focus on revenue producing activities instead of managing tasks that Stax automates.’