Best Practices for Business Agility

By MAXfocus Guest Blog 1

The Perpetually Valuable MSP is the concept of adding business agility to a stable MSP business, with the ability to add new services in a dynamic fashion.

Since launching the concept at our MAX 2014 conferences, I have been exploring the best practices behind the most successful MSPs. In previous columns, I’ve introduced the premise of the Perpetually Valuable MSP , the formula for success, the best practices related to testing and new services, and the metrics around these.

Now, it’s important to understand all the best practices related to business agility.

Test new offerings with rapid deployment

New products and services are, by definition, less capable and less predictable than established offerings. Companies need to adopt a mindset that new offerings do not need to be perfect, but are tested in limited rollouts when they have achieved “minimum viable functionality” for initial customer adoption.

In other words: This is the opposite of “paralysis by analysis.” Do not insist on perfection for new offerings; improve them incrementally over time based on lessons learned.

Argue in the alternative

In order to vet these new offerings, the Perpetually Valuable MSP should adopt a concept borrowed from the legal profession and argue in the alternative. Inside your private development meetings, adopt the position of your competitors and argue why your customers should not continue to buy from you or why new prospects should choose someone else to provide their services. Too often, companies get “tunnel vision” when they only argue their own position and promote their own value.

To find weak spots or vulnerability, companies need to actively challenge their assumptions and attack their positions. Do this reasonably frequently (that is, quarterly or monthly) at regularly scheduled times to get your whole team to buy in.

Define a specific launch methodology

Based on experience and best practices, companies need to establish a scripted, repeatable approach to finding, developing, testing, and launching new offerings. If a company infrequently launches something new, it’s easy to miss big and small details. The more frequently a company launches new things, the easier it is to develop a “muscle memory” for doing the right things.

But you can’t afford to wait for the successful completion of several new launches before you get good at it, so leverage peer resources to identify best practices. Build a script to minimize uncertainty and maximize efficiency for launching new products.

Develop a specific de-commission methodology

As a mirror to the concept of a Launch Methodology, it is equally critical that companies define a systematic approach to ending activities that no longer produce value. Without such an approach, companies tend to unnecessarily drag out the ending process, clinging to things that used to work, resting on past successes, and missing out on future opportunities. Plus, when your de-commission methodology includes a scripted approach to re-allocating resources (that is, staff), your team is much more likely to participate willingly without sabotaging the process to protect their own job security.

These methodologies allow for agile development of new offerings and the efficient updating of services to adapt to changing times. Agile development skills like these will ensure growth and viability over the long term.

Dave Sobel, Director of Partner Community at MAXfocus, is responsible for fostering the growth and success of MAXFocus Partners. As Director of Partner Community, he helps promote collaboration, education and innovation among MAXfocus Partners and among the industry as a whole, ensures they have access to business, technology and market resources, and are utilizing the MAX Platform to achieve positive growth, enhance their offerings and become best-in-class solution providers. Guest blogs such as this one are published monthly and are part of MSPmentor’s annual platinum sponsorship.