“As businesses increasingly move to public cloud and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, the time had come to replace our existing old fashioned desktop solutions. We needed to introduce modern, innovative, evolutionary market leading services - and rather than developing a solution in-house, we looked at the digital workspace market and were ‘wowed’ by Workspace 365 – so we decided to work with them.”

Office automation is highly advanced in the Netherlands, and leading MSPs pride themselves on being close to their customers and the way their employees operate and interface with business applications.  

“At the top of the market, it’s about doing so much more than just the traditional technology services with a bit of Microsoft licensing thrown in,” continues Henk; “Many small and medium sized businesses here don’t have an IT department, and they look to their IT partner to be that resource. We ideally provide and manage everything - right up to the desktop. And whilst Claranet people fully understand the technology, the vast majority of customer end users don’t, so it’s about making their working lives and technology journeys easier and more productive.”

Claranet focuses on three client pillars: Employee Satisfaction, IT Modernisation, and Efficiency, all of which map onto the strategic objectives of their clients. They link closely with Workspace 365’s pillars that drive Game Changing Efficiency by Simplifying things, Personalising IT and Uniting workforces.  

Making life easy for employees means they are more productive, and engaged at work. Well-designed technology platforms and services ensure IT staff spend less time on helpdesk services and employee issues, and more time on more productive and transformative projects - and at a P&L level, C-suite objectives are met as productivity, workforce efficiency, customer service, and employee engagement all increase. 

Optimisation - simple things make a difference 

The continual move to public cloud services and a focus on optimising everything from the network to the desktop is high on all organisational agendas. Technology is moving very quickly and with a shortage of IT skills, getting things done and meeting increasingly demanding workforce expectations is challenging.  

Says Henk: “Return on Investment (ROI) is vital to every project and time is money, so if employees can get to the right place quickly and easily, then non-productive work time is minimised in a world where everything counts. A simple example of a Workspace 365 benefit is with staff expenses and holiday bookings. Opening and closing clunky legacy systems is a pain for everyone, but in a well-designed environment the whole process from requesting and approving both leave and expenses is incredibly simple. Furthermore, Workspace 365 works perfectly on any platform from in-house servers to public cloud services, and all variants in-between.” 

Business relationships and partner benefits

The ability to build and nurture business relationships into longer term partnerships is the objective of all managed services providers, and with so many MSPs struggling to differentiate themselves in a crowded supplier market, the ability to outperform the competition is key.

Concludes Henk: “Becoming a client’s trusted IT partner doesn’t happen overnight. You have to build that trust as you extend the service offering. Our customer sweet spot is around 250 seats, right up to 1,000. We call our digital workplace WorkSmart365. It integrates Workspace 365 with Microsoft 365 and our backup and managed services solutions. It’s a great way to add additional value and extend our commercial reach.  

When you look at competitors like Citrix and Microsoft themselves, they all provide excellent solutions, but what sets Workspace 365 apart is the value for money of their excellent solution.

To us, a successful business relationship is a co-defined and co-created client IT environment. Wrapping together a tailorable, cost efficient, and easy to use digital workplace into a fully managed umbrella agreement is great way to provide real value and outperform the competition.”