Boost Microsoft 365 for MSPs and VARs – webinar recap

How do you increase customer happiness and, differentiate yourself from all the other MSPs and VARs in your area that offer the exact same services, like Microsoft 365 and IT security? Mark Grasmayer, Head of Marketing at Workspace 365 and guest lecturer in digital marketing at multiple universities explained his view on the market and how he sees that MSPs and VARs can truly stand out  in an online session.  

You can also watch the video on-demand here!

How do you stand out from other MSPs or VARs? 

To find out how you can stand out from other MSPs and VARs, it’s important to realise with how many MSPs or VARs you’re competing with and if they have the same focus and brand messaging as you have. Mapping this out will give you a good idea of your real competitors and how you can stand out from them.  

Also, customers do their own research, so it is wise to do that as well! Search for the challenges or keywords that your customer will look for and make sure that you understand their wishes and needs. 

Is your brand truly unique? 

Being a Microsoft certified partner, or being ‘really personal’ is not always the best way to stand out and doesn’t make your organisation unique. You don’t want to say exactly the same thing as all your competitors. Mark’s advice would be to make a list and discover what your competitors say on their website or socials to differentiate themselves. Don’t do it to know what you have to say, but do this so you can say something different to stand out.  

How you stand out: 

1. Vertical focus: Only focus on a specific vertical like education or healthcare to become the leader in that specific vertical.
2. Technology focus: Deliver AI solutions or cloud technology and hire experts in this field and make them share knowledge. That way, you can profile yourself as the expert in the market.
3. Solution focus: Of course you should offer Microsoft 365 as chances are big that your customers require this, but you can stand out by also becoming expert in one solution that your competitors don’t offer. For example, you could become an expert in SAP services or Service Now.
4. Mission focus: Our goal is to simplify work for people who do important work, so everything we do is to accomplish that. That way, we have a mission focus that makes us stand out from the rest. It also helps us to make choices in our messaging and product development.

Think like an artist: Create a winning culture

One thing is clear, people all like to be unique, but they want to fit in and be with the people that inspire them.

This is also a great way to stand out from your competitors, by creating a strong culture. For example, Coolblue always makes positive and striking advertisements that make them seem playful. You can see this as well in their offices, where rooms are decorated differently, and to their customer service, where they send personal handwritten cards.

Impact of the rise of SaaS and Office 365

With Software as a Service (SaaS) the market is changing rapidly. Previously a lot of MSPs and VARs implemented CRM-systems, but nowadays people can easily purchase a SaaS subscription or buy or these type of systems and don’t always need their MSPs or VARs for that.

So find out what your added value is and how you can connect all these services together, so your customers get the most out of their services.

In our article ‘5 steps to becoming a Modern Service Provider’ we’ll explain how you can stay in business as an MSP and stay relevant for your customers.

How Dutch MSPs differentiate themselves

Workspace 365 is a hybrid digital workspace for remote and front-line workers. Within Workspace 365 you can unite current and new technologies for your customers. You can help customers with their cloud transition as it’s a cloud based workspace and you can unite all your information, communication, documents and intranet in one platform.

We’ll discuss how Workspace 365 can help MSPs and VARs stand out with a vertical, technology, solution and mission focus that we’ve discussed before.

Most successful MSPs in the Netherlands with a vertical focus

In the Netherlands we’ve noticed that our most successful MSPs create packaged offerings and link them to their specialty. Some of our partners have a focus on educational institutions and have learned how they can create a workspace for student and teachers. They can do this for healthcare and government as well.

Stand out from others with a technology focus

Other partners focus more on the technology, for example helping customers move from RDP to the cloud and unite all their technology in one place.

Become an expert in your field with a solution focus

Other partners focus on implementing Microsoft Teams for their customers. They integrated Workspace 365 in Microsoft Teams to enable customers to have on overview of everything they need and can easily communicate with other colleagues via Teams. As you can see in the image below, Workspace 365 is available as an app in Microsoft Teams.

Differentiate yourself with a mission focus

The last focus, which make our MSPs successful is the mission focus. Our mission is to conquer complexity for front-line workers. They make sure that their customers know that we want to simplify their work and allow them to work on any device at any time.

So make sure you choose one of these approaches to make sure you stand out from other MSPs or VARs and that your brand is really unique. Be critical and look at your competitors to make sure you really stand out.

Workspace 365 for your customers

We think it’s important to work with MSPs and VARs to understand the wishes and needs of their customers and what they expect from their digital workspace. That way, we are able to develop the ideal digital workspace for the customers, making it easier for MSPs and VARs to satisfy them.

Our goals with Workspace 365 in collaboration with MSPs and VARs are:

• To help organisations understand the IT-landscape and how they can keep up with technology;
• To simplify existing and new software solutions to enable people to work more productive and efficient;
• To reduce the amount of time that people switch between applications, so that they can focus on their important work and core tasks.

We work together with partner because they have a fundamental impact on the customers. – Mark Grasmayer

Do you want to find out if we can help you to increase your customers happiness? Book a strategy call!