One of the most challenging things about running an MSP is choosing the right partners. It’s widely accepted that MSPs benefit from partnering, but no MSP owner wants to make a poor partnership choice and, aside from the tremendous effort and costs involved with onboarding a new set of products and services, the opportunity cost of having to repeat the process again because the relationship does not work out can be very significant.
With our experience running a successful MSP and working with MSPs for over 20 years the team at Activa understands this well, and we’ve designed our Partner Program and in fact all of our systems and processes to benefit our partners.
In this article we explore exactly how MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications by comparing the experience of our partners with that of the many MSPs we talk to. Our observations are based on actual situations and outcomes, but for privacy reasons no specific names are included in the article. Instead, we will refer to “Lone Warrior MSP“, who deals with multiple connectivity carriers and resells a very widely used PBX solution, and “Partnered MSP”, who has partnered with Activa Communications.
Single point of contact for communications
One of the key ways that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications is that it is far more efficient to deal with a single point relating to ordering, managing, and billing communications than it is to deal with multiple carriers and suppliers, each with different systems and processes.
Lone Warrior MSP has chosen to do what most MSPs that resell communications have done, which is to sign up with multiple carriers directly. As a result, they are absorbing significant costs because:
- Their team all need to be trained in multiple portals, with each portal having totally different designs and processes.
- Service qualifications involve manually checking what is available from each carrier, for each site to be qualified.
- Their technicians need to interact with multiple carrier helpdesks, each with different processes and standards, and often not understanding the difference between an MSP and an End Customer.
- Their monthly billing process is time consuming and complex, involves consolidating and reconciling invoices and usage reports from multiple carriers.
Partnered MSP has chosen to partner with Activa Communications, and as a result:
- Their team only needs to be trained in one portal to order and manage any communications service, from SIP trunks to Teams Voice and Xelion, from NBN TC-4 and TC-2 to Enterprise Ethernet, and fibre services from all Tier 1 carriers.
- Service qualifications can be performed in one step, with results provided in seconds across all carriers and send by email and stored in the portal for future reference.
- Their technicians only need to interact with one helpdesk, supplementing their internal team and providing a buffer between sometimes disappointing experiences when dealing directly with carriers.
- Their billing process is streamlined, with options to earn generous commissions, to rebill competitive wholesale rates, or to outsource white-labelled billing functions for maximum efficiency.
Partnered MSP can compete effectively with Lone Warrior MSP as they have increased their efficiency and reduced their cost base of delivering communications services.
- They have access to comprehensive coverage across all Tier 1 and select Tier 2 carriers, and yet they don’t need to learn and use all of the separate systems of each carrier.
- They can qualify site locations in one fast and easy process with easy access to results over time.
- Their support and billing processes are streamlines and they can allocate the time of their staff to more important tasks, including helping their customers.
- They can see that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications after enjoying having a single point of contact for all of their communications services.
Stand out from the crowd with Xelion
When a product in a specific category becomes very popular it can be a double-edged sword for MSPs. Customers may know and trust the platform, but as all of their competitors are selling the same platform it can be difficult to stand out in the marketplace. It can be hard to see how MSPs benefit from partnering with a supplier when anyone and everyone is also a partner.
Lone Warrior MSP has chosen to resell a popular platform which is single tenant based and from a company known for sometimes toxic behaviour towards partners. As a result, they have found that:
- Margins are under pressure, and customers are able to shop around based on price alone.
- Managing individual physical or virtual hosts for each customer, including monitoring and backups, is very inefficient and time consuming.
- License renewal and version management is inefficient and out of line with the monthly per-user model that MSPs and their customers are comfortable with.
- The supplier’s behaviour towards partners makes it hard to see how MSPs benefit from partnering with them.
Partnered MSP has chosen to resell Xelion, the UC platform for the modern workplace, which is exclusively available to partners of Activa Communications. As a result, MSPs benefit from partnering with Xelion and enjoy the following benefits:
- The simple license model and amazing user interface of Xelion helps them stand out in the marketplace and shift the conversation to benefits and value, rather than only price.
- The fully managed Xelion platform means they no longer have to manage server hosts, backups or monitoring, reducing their costs and directly adding to their bottom line.
- The tight integration between Xelion and MS365/EntraID provides automatic provisioning, reducing time spent onboarding and offboarding new users.
- Xelion’s focus on empowering the end-user to control their communications reduces support calls, and thus costs for the MSP, just another wat that MSPs benefit from partnering.
Partnered MSP is able to stand out in a crowded marketplace and outcompete Lone Warrior MSP by distinguishing their UC solution on features and value, rather than just price.
- They have access to a powerful and yet easy to use UC platform that their customers love to use, and their competitors aren’t offering.
- They no longer need to manage virtual machines with backup and monitoring for each of their customers.
- Their support requests relating to UC and PBX have dropped because users are managing their communications independently.
- Their customers are now paying a single monthly amount per user, with no license versions, upgrades or renewals to worry about.
- They can see that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications after adopting Xelion as their preferred UC / UCaaS offering.
Extend the cybersecurity stack without adding to per-user costs
Every MSP is providing cybersecurity options to their customers, and in most cases offering a service with a per-user cost attached. Whatever products and solutions an MSP includes in their ‘stack’, the challenge is always to manage the costs involved.
Lone Warrior MSP is doing an excellent job of delivering a full stack of cybersecurity solutions, with the same outcomes as most MSPs, including:
- Raw connectivity is provided to their customers, with firewalls being the first line of defence to protect customers from threats.
- Content filtering, if provided, is delivered at the firewall level or within the customer’s network, generating Internet traffic that competes with desired usage.
- Costs are attached to users or devices, with customers able to make price comparisons easily based on the stack components that are included.
- Rapid response to protect all of their customers from a known threat requires manual intervention across a variety of different systems and platforms.
Partnered MSP has chosen to offer SentryNet to supplement their cybersecurity stack, and as a result:
- Their customers enjoy all of the same benefits of the cybersecurity stack they are provided by their MSP.
- SentryNet blocks known threats before they ever reach the customer’s firewall, reducing load on the firewall and wasted Internet traffic.
- SentryNet provides content filtering functions to block unwanted content types, again reducing load on the firewall and wasted Internet traffic.
- SentryNet empowers Partnered MSP to respond rapidly to emerging threats by blocking destinations across all their customers with a single change.
As SentryNet is delivered alongside connectivity at a fixed cost, there is no per-user cost to add to the cybersecurity stack of Partnered MSP, and their customers are able to see the benefits of improved Internet performance after threats and unwanted content are blocked.
- They can see the benefits of SentryNet Transparent Security, filtering out threats and unwanted content without adding complexity to their cybersecurity stack.
- They can rapidly block known and emerging threats across all of their customers with one simple change to their SentryNet configuration, regardless of what cybersecurity systems their customers are using.
- Their customers are not only better protected, but their Internet connection performance is improved because unwanted traffic has been eliminated.
- They can see that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications after adding SentryNet Transparent Security to their cybersecurity stack.
Improve project management with organised projects and provisioning
MSPs that deal with communications services know that managing the projects involved is an intensive and time-consuming task, and the problems and workload are magnified when the MSP is dealing directly with multiple carriers or suppliers.
Lone Warrior MSP has taken on the task of coordinating their communications orders across multiple carriers, and as a result:
- Their team needs to coordinate the many steps and interactions involved with number porting or connectivity service builds, with each order being treated separately by the carriers involved.
- Their team needs to interpret all of the order updates and messages from the different carriers, which each have their own formats and protocols.
- The various different carriers don’t provide any grouping of orders to allow the MSP to see the status of their orders from a project management point of view.
Partnered MSP has made the strategic decision to partner with Activa Communications, and as a result:
- Their team is able to group orders for any type of connectivity under projects, providing a shared view in line with their project management processes.
- Provisioning updates across all types of orders are in a clear and consistent format that makes it easy for the team to quickly understand and interpret the updates.
- Their project managers are able to see the status and target dates of individual orders and groups of orders under projects.
The Partner Portal of Activa Communications was built by a team with decades of experience in running and working in successful MSP businesses, and the features that it provides are custom-designed to help MSP’s be more efficient and profitable. Partnered MSP benefits from this in many ways.
- Their project management functions are more efficient, because they no longer need to coordinate the status of orders across many different portals, systems and teams.
- Their orders are properly grouped into projects so that they can see at a glance exactly what the status of each order is, and the project it relates to.
- Their team is empowered to view the status of all their projects and orders, across a complete range of communications services.
- They can see that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications after reducing their project management workload and improving visibility throughout the provisioning process.
How MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications
In this article we have explored just some of the ways that MSPs benefit from partnering with Activa Communications. Our portal, systems and processes have all been designed with the needs of Australian and New Zealand MSPs in mind, and we are seeing rapid growth as a result.
If you are interested in learning more about how our Partner Program works, or how it can benefit your business, we’re ready to talk.
You can learn more about our Partner Program by clicking HERE. If you’re ready to apply, click HERE.
If you would like to learn more about SentryNet Transparent Security, click HERE.
if you would like to learn more about Xelion, the UC platform for the modern workplace, click HERE.
Proudly written by a human being without AI assistance.