11 Innovative Ways to Add Operational Efficiency

One of the recurring themes of 2018 has been how to stop hemorrhaging profit in order to increase the bottom line. In other words, how do managed service providers (MSPs) become more proficient so that the revenue they bring in isn’t wasted by inefficiencies in operations?

It isn’t just Channel Futures that’s been harping on the subject. Operational efficiency has been the subject of breakout sessions and talked about in keynote speeches in the conference circuit throughout 2018. Carolyn April, senior director of industry analyst at CompTIA, has spoken often about strategies to do more with less, including the usual culprits: implement a professional services automation (PSA) solution; automate back-office processes through an enterprise resource processing (ERP) system; and stand over your techs with a whip. (We’re joking; please don’t do this.)

CompTIA’s Carolyn April

April also tells us it’s imperative to reward staff members for their efforts. Without staff buy-in, she advises, your efforts to streamline have a high likelihood of failure. The key is to create incentives to boost productivity and encourage them to constantly be thinking of ways to more efficiently complete tasks.

“Two-thirds of channel firms in CompTIA’s research study on operational efficiency are doing just that, having created annual goals that incent their employees to be more productive,” says April. “Another 37 percent have hired a formal project manager to take the broad view of how the organization is meeting these goals.”

But if you don’t feel like throwing money at your staff to incentivize them, take a tip from one of these 11 channel partners that have been thinking outside the box. Through experimentation, some MSPs have landed on creative formulas to create operational efficiencies that have served them very, very well this year.